How Many Births to Illegal Immigrants?: A Preliminary Estimate
By Jason Richwine and Steven A. Camarota on January 24, 2025
Since President Trump issued his executive order abolishing birthright citizenship, we have received numerous inquiries about the number of children born to illegal immigrant mothers. We have not formally updated our estimate since publishing a 2018 report on the subject. It will take some time to investigate changes in the characteristics of the illegal population due to the Biden border surge, along with the extent to which the Census Bureau surveys truly reflect those changes.
However, based on how births to illegal immigrants have compared to births to noncitizens in the past, our back-of-the-envelope estimate right now is that there were 225,000 to 250,000 births to illegal immigrants in 2023, amounting to close to 7 percent of births in the U.S. We will revise these numbers as we obtain more data.
We do not expect a very large upward revision in this 2023 estimate, however, because the CDC has recorded a fairly steady number of births in the U.S. during this decade. The CDC believes that it captures nearly all births, and illegal immigrant parents in particular have the incentive to register their children’s births in order to obtain birth certificates and citizenship.
Up to a quarter million births to illegal immigrants is hardly trivial. It appears to be more than the number of births to legal noncitizens, and it is greater than the total number of births in all but two states taken individually. Although not yet available, the 2024 numbers are likely to be even higher.
https://cis.org/Richwine/How-Many-Births-Illegal-Immigrants-Preliminary-Estimate
