How Many Illegal Aliens Reside in Sanctuary Jurisdictions?
A bit more than half
By Jason Richwine on December 17, 2024
When President Trump begins his efforts to deport illegal immigrants in January, he will need to overcome “sanctuary jurisdictions” that do not fully cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). As my colleague Jessica Vaughan explains, sanctuary jurisdictions are state or local governments that frustrate enforcement by “refusing to or prohibiting agencies from complying with ICE detainers, imposing unreasonable conditions on detainer acceptance, denying ICE access to interview incarcerated aliens, or otherwise impeding communication or information exchanges between their personnel and federal immigration officers.”
To assess how much of an obstacle to enforcement these sanctuary jurisdictions are, we first need an estimate of how many illegal immigrants reside in them. The table below combines the Center’s list of sanctuary jurisdictions with our illegal immigrant population estimates. Although there is much imprecision in the data, the bottom line is that close to eight million illegal aliens, equaling 56 percent of the estimated nationwide total, live in sanctuary jurisdictions.
https://cis.org/Richwine/How-Many-Illegal-Aliens-Reside-Sanctuary-Jurisdictions
