As federal agencies start to deliver on President Donald Trump’s long-promised crackdown on immigration, ramping up deportation quotas and conducting raids in places as diverse as Chicago and Bakersfield, it’s worth looking at two numbers that show why Southern California is the unofficial capital of Undocumented America.
The first is this: 13.7 million. That’s how many people are estimated to be living in the United States without full legal authority to do so.
The second is this: 1.44 million. That’s how many unauthorized folks reside in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside or San Bernardino counties, according to estimates from the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan group that tracks immigration issues.
There are a lot of other numbers to consider, too; more than half (57%) of local unauthorized immigrants have been here 15 years or longer; about 4 in 10 live in a family with at least one American citizen; about 1 in 5 owns a home.
But the bottom line is clear: Nearly 1 out of every 9 people living in the United States illegally resides in the four-county region most Southern Californians call home.
If the federal government comes even close to delivering on Trump’s campaign pledge to deport “millions and millions of illegals” – a promise that helped Trump win a second term – this area stands to lose a lot of people.
Many people, locally, would welcome that; many others would feel heartache or outrage. But regardless of politics, the changes that mass deportation might bring to Southern California could be profound.
“What’s somewhat unique about the unauthorized population in Southern California is that it’s got deep roots,” said Manuel Pastor, an economist who has studied the economic impact of legal and illegal immigration in Southern California in his role as director of the Equity Research Institute at USC. “Our big burst of migrants came in the 1980s and ’90s. So at this point, a lot of undocumented people in Southern California live in families that have more American citizens than they have people who aren’t. It’s very integrated in that regard.”
“Deportation is appealing to a lot of people, even some immigrants, in the abstract,” Pastor said. “But when it starts to actually happen, when they’re taking nannies and gardeners and restaurant workers … that’s when everybody will notice it and feel it.
“Even if you welcome this, you have to understand that this region will be different in many ways,” he added. “We’d be a fundamentally different place.”
With that in mind, here’s a look at the demographics of locals who might be deported and the new rules that might affect this region the most.
Who we’re talking about
The people most likely to be deported from Southern California comprise just a small slice of a much bigger world of American immigrants.
Census data shows the United States is home to about 51.3 million people who were born elsewhere, with Mexico, India, China and the Philippines being the four most common home countries. Collectively, foreign-born people represent 13.8% of the U.S. population, the biggest share since the immigration waves of the late 1800s.
Most immigrants live here legally. About half (49%) are naturalized U.S. citizens, and about 1 in 5 (19%) are lawful permanent residents, meaning many have an option to become a citizen or to stay in this country for a long time. A smaller group (about 5%) hold time-limited visas because they’re students or they’re specialized workers or they are diplomats or related to diplomats.
That leaves roughly 13.7 million, or about 1 in 4 of all immigrants, living in the United States without full legal authority to do so.
Technically, many are not undocumented.
About 3.9 million have applied for asylum or other forms of protection from deportation, according to an estimate by Jennifer Van Hook, a sociologist at Penn State University who studies the demographics of immigration.
Many are recent arrivals, people who applied for asylum after coming to the border as the U.S. job market bounced back from the pandemic and as political and health conditions in much of Central and South America went sideways. Others are seeking different forms of protection because they face persecution at home, after helping Americans in Afghanistan or fleeing war in Ukraine or regime change in Venezuela. Still others are so-called Dreamers, young(ish) adults who were brought here as children and are protected by the Obama-era program Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
Whatever their reasoning, people in this category are following the immigration rules that applied at the time they came, as their documentation will attest. Still, most could be deported or prevented from trying to immigrate under the rules of executive orders signed last month by Trump.
Those in the remaining group – about 9.7 million people – have no documentation, no protections from deportation and, many argue, no legal right to stay in this country.
“It’s why I voted for (Trump),” said Glenn Anderson, a Costa Mesa retiree. “It’s time to clean this country up and send those people home.”
The immigration numbers in Southern California – legal and illegal – outstrip the nation.
About 29% of all people living in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties – more than 5.1 million – were born in another country, making the region one of the nation’s most immigrant-centric communities. Among local immigrants, roughly 1 in 4 (28%) don’t have legal status, a slightly higher rate than the national average. Though most unauthorized people now living in the four-county region come from Mexico, other common home countries include El Salvador, Guatemala, South Korea and China.
Experts say the unauthorized population of Southern California is more entrenched than smaller groups in other parts of the country.
Part of that is about timing. Not only have more than half of the region’s unauthorized migrants lived here 15 years or longer, but only about 13% arrived in the past five years, according to the Migration Policy Institute. That means Southern California schools, churches and youth sports, along with many other community institutions, have long-standing connections to unauthorized families.
Another factor is jobs. About 7 in 10 unauthorized residents in the four-county region are between the ages of 24 and 56, so-called “prime” working years. Though it’s tough to track their overall employment, most research suggests they are more likely to hold a job, or two, than are their American citizen counterparts.
And while local unauthorized workers are about twice as likely as citizens to earn wages at or below the poverty level, nearly half (46%) earn twice as much as the prevailing poverty wage in their community. It’s partly why home ownership among unauthorized people in Southern California ranges from a low of 17% in Los Angeles County to as high as 41% in Riverside County.
Unlike unauthorized workers around the country, most in Southern California rarely see a farm or the inside of a meat-packing plant. Instead, they often work in a few key employment sectors – construction, hotels and restaurants.
The construction connection soon could become problematic.
An estimated 110,000 to 140,000 people build houses, offices and schools in Southern California even though they don’t have legal status to live or work here. As the region begins to rebuild the 12,000 homes, offices, schools and other structures lost during January’s wildfires in Los Angeles County, more workers, not fewer, will be needed. Currently, it appears local demand for construction labor could be rising just as federal agents are sweeping up lots of local construction workers.
But even if citizen construction workers from around the country eventually plug holes in the local labor market – as happened in New Orleans and surrounding communities in the wake of Hurricane Katrina – USC’s Pastor and others don’t see a similar pattern playing out in hotels and restaurants.
Those industries, Pastor said, can be “complementary” drivers of economic growth, meaning they help generate employment in other sectors. And those jobs, he added, aren’t likely to be filled by citizen workers, even if wages are boosted and passed on to consumers.
“Maybe it could raise wages slightly for busboys and for nannies,” Pastor said. “But I just don’t see a lot of U.S.-born residents flocking to that work.
If deportation sweeps hit Southern California, Pastor offers words of encouragement for the region’s economy:
“Good luck.”
New rules, old rules
Trump, on the campaign trail, painted immigrants in unflattering terms.
He called them animals and falsely claimed some in Ohio were eating pets. He argued, also falsely, that immigrants gobble up huge amounts of public resources and commit more crime than American citizens. He claimed they are poisoning the blood of our country.
That message won.
Since re-taking office on Jan. 20, Trump has signed executive orders setting out rules for immigration enforcement, freezing or ending some programs that could let immigrants into the country legally, and urging federal agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the military, to be more aggressive in picking up people suspected of being here illegally.
The Washington Post, MSNBC and others have reported that the administration has set quotas for ICE offices to arrest and detain roughly four times more people, per day, than the numbers detained during the final months of the Biden administration, when immigration had fallen sharply.
Trump’s executive orders offer up some new rules, and revive some older rules, aimed at slowing immigration and possibly expanding the numbers of people who could be eligible for deportation:
• Declared that the U.S. border is being invaded by immigrants, including cartels he labels as terrorist groups. By formalizing language he used on the campaign trail, Trump is making it easier to use the military in more expansive ways at the border and to use more money for border enforcement without formally requesting it from Congress.
• Sought to end birthright citizenship via executive order. If the move is allowed to stand – and, so far, it’s been challenged by dozens of states and blocked by at least two courts – it would upend the 14th Amendment and set a new precedent for ways the United States changes the Constitution. By some estimates, it also could boost the ranks of the unauthorized in the United States by about 150,000 people a year. It could be a particularly important factor in Southern California, where most people living here illegally have jobs and deep ties to the community.
• Ended programs that, in recent years, had allowed roughly 1 million immigrants to apply for asylum and other protections in the United States and work in the country while awaiting final word on their applications. In a related move, he pushed to end Temporary Protected Status for more than 300,000 Venezuelans who have come to the United States in recent years to escape the economic chaos and violence that have come with the rise of President Nicolás Maduro.
• Pushed to revive a 1940 law that requires noncitizens to register with the government. Though there currently is no process for that to play out, immigrant rights groups noted that the concept previously was used to target people suspected of espionage and to help locate Japanese Americans who were held in internment camps during part of World War II.
Anderson, the Costa Mesa retiree who supports Trump’s immigration policy, suggested action on immigration – even if it leads to legal challenges – is welcome.
“He’s doing something about the border,” Anderson said. “People might not like everything. But it’s something. That’s better than nothing.”
It’s unclear if any or all of the new rules proposed by Trump via executive order will survive court battles.
It’s also unclear how many people actually will be deported if courts let the rules stay in place. Former President Joe Biden deported about 1.5 million people during his four-year term, roughly the same number deported by Trump during his first term, and well under the 2.9 million people deported by President Barack Obama.
But some locals who lack legal status said the new rules – and the fact that so many people support them – are disheartening.
“It feels awful,” said Carmen, a 54-year-old resident of Rialto who said she came to the United States from Mexico in 1997 and declined to be identified by her last name because she believes she would be targeted for deportation.
“I work hard. I’ve raised a family here. My husband and I pay taxes. I buried a child here,” she added.
“I wouldn’t know what to do if I was sent back. This is my home now.”