How Many Illegals Are in the US?

Researchers at the Yale School of Management have estimated the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States to be nearly twice as large as the number widely accepted and extrapolated from the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey.

The study, conducted by Yale professors Jonathan Feinstein and Edward Kaplan as well as MIT lecturer Mohammad Fazel-Zarandi, used demographic modeling data to produce a range of 16.2 million to 29.5 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., with an average estimate of 22.1 million. The study was published on Sept. 21 in the journal PLOS One.

This number — 22.1 million — stands in contrast to the widely accepted estimate of 11.3 million, a number frequently referenced by politicians in recent elections.

Yale University