AP Traces 4.5 Million Border Migrants to Communities in Every Corner of America

The Associated Press spent over a year prying loose federal records that finally answer a basic question: after 4.5 million migrants got released into the United States following a border crossing, where did they actually go?

The answer, according to AP's analysis, is everywhere. Cincinnati. Elkhart, Indiana. Dodge City, Kansas. Knoxville, Tennessee. Aurora, Colorado. Paterson, New Jersey. Places that had barely any foreign-born population a decade ago now have neighborhoods reshaped by migrants from countries most Americans couldn't find on a map.

How AP got the numbers

AP filed a Freedom of Information Act request with Customs and Border Protection in June 2025, asking for anonymized ZIP code, nationality, age and gender data on every person released at the Mexican border. CBP initially stonewalled with generic public data. After AP appealed, the agency produced records in December covering 5,619,982 people arrested for illegal entry between October 1, 2018 and July 7, 2025. After stripping out entries with no ZIP code or likely duplicates, AP was left with 3,652,313 usable records, plus another 858,537 from people who came through official ports of entry, provided by CBP in May.

The numbers

Venezuelans and Cubans topped the list, with roughly 773,000 and 539,000 arrivals respectively, according to AP's data cited by the Daily Wire. One million Venezuelans total were released into the country, per WUSF Public Media, and many skipped traditional immigrant hubs like Miami for smaller cities with little established Venezuelan presence, including the suburbs south of Salt Lake City.

Border Patrol encountered migrants from 174 countries in a single year, the AP found, a sharp break from earlier decades when crossings were almost entirely Mexican and Central American. Florida was the single most popular destination state overall, according to WUSF and the AP data.

The city-level detail is where the picture gets granular. Queens, New York, took in migrants from at least 30 countries in 34 different ZIP codes, with five nationalities, Ecuador, China, Colombia, Venezuela and India, each sending more than 7,000 people. Philadelphia saw a similar pattern: 19 ZIP codes drew arrivals from 30-plus countries, led by Brazil, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, with more than 1,000 migrants even coming from the country of Georgia.

Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio, absorbed large numbers from West Africa, Uzbekistan and India. Silicon Valley saw a surge of Indian migrants. Chinese migrants gravitated to Los Angeles and New York. Cubans mostly landed in Florida but also turned up in Louisville, Kentucky; Grand Island, Nebraska; and Odessa, Texas. Colombians clustered in Aurora, outside Denver. Peruvians picked Paterson, New Jersey.

Haitian migrants, now a central target of President Trump's deportation push, largely settled in South Florida, Indianapolis, Boston and New York City, according to the Daily Wire's summary of the data.

The legal-versus-illegal distinction that some coverage skips

AP's methodology notes the dataset includes people who crossed both legally and illegally. Migrants who cross without authorization can still legally claim asylum under U.S. law and international treaty if they assert they fled danger, according to AP's reporting distributed through U.S. News & World Report. Near the peak of the surge in 2023, some asylum seekers were told to wait 10 years for an initial court date.

The Daily Wire's coverage, and the version republished on truth4freedom.wordpress, refer to the entire 4.5 million as "illegal immigrants" throughout. AP's own data description is more precise. A meaningful share of these arrivals entered a legal process, however backlogged, rather than evading immigration law entirely.

What's not in dispute: this was a historic demographic shift. The Daily Wire notes more than 40% of migrants released were military-age men, a figure AP's data supports but doesn't further break down by context. The foreign-born share of the U.S. population hit its highest level ever recorded during this period, according to AP's reporting carried by the LA Times, NBC Washington, WUSF and KRGV.

One open question AP's own reporting flags: nobody verified whether migrants actually live at the addresses they gave CBP. Authorities lacked the resources to check. Some have since moved, left the country voluntarily, or been detained and deported under the current administration's enforcement push. How many of the 4.5 million are still where this data says they are is something no government agency has yet tracked.