How many undocumented immigrants have they found in Minnesota since 2025
Executive summary
No authoritative source in the provided reporting gives a count of how many undocumented immigrants were "found in Minnesota since 2025"; available reports instead offer snapshot estimates of the state's unauthorized population that differ by source and methodology, with Pew reporting about 130,000 as of 2023 (reported Aug 2025) and other analyses and advocacy groups citing figures near 95,000 for recent years [1] [2] [3]. Because the question as phrased—"found since 2025"—implies a running total of enforcement discoveries or new identifications after 2025, the data at hand cannot supply that specific metric [1] [3].
1. What the major estimates say and why they disagree
Two widely cited numbers appear across the reporting: a Pew Research-derived estimate that 130,000 unauthorized immigrants lived in Minnesota as of 2023, reported by Axios Twin Cities in August 2025 [1], and a recurring figure of roughly 95,000 undocumented residents used by advocacy groups and some compilations [2] [3]. These discrepancies stem from differing methodologies — Pew’s analysis and Migration Policy Institute approaches impute unauthorized status onto Census/ACS data using different adjustments and weighting choices, while state and advocacy reports sometimes use alternate inputs or older baseline years [4] [5] [2]. The variation is not an error so much as the predictable result of estimating an inherently hidden population with distinct statistical models [4] [6].
2. Why no source answers "found since 2025"
None of the supplied sources track a cumulative count of people "found" or detected by enforcement since 2025; instead they present cross‑sectional estimates of how many people are currently unauthorized in Minnesota or lived there in a given year [1] [4] [2]. Enforcement tallies — arrests, removals, or administrative detections since a particular date — would come from DHS/ICE operational records or state law‑enforcement reporting, and such records are not included among the provided documents. The available material therefore cannot confirm or deny any claim about how many were located, detained, or identified after 2025 [1] [7].
3. Context: population-level impacts and economic framing
Reporting from the Minnesota Budget Project and other state analyses frames undocumented residents as a meaningful slice of the workforce and tax base, estimating tax contributions and emphasizing economic risk in hypothetical mass‑deportation scenarios; these analyses rely on population estimates like those above to project fiscal impacts [7]. The American Immigration Council and MN Compass material place unauthorized residents within a broader immigrant population of roughly half a million foreign‑born people in Minnesota, underlining that undocumented people are one part of a diverse immigrant ecosystem [2] [8]. These institutional perspectives often have policy or advocacy aims—budgetary analysts warn about the economic disruption of large‑scale removals, while advocacy groups emphasize integration and contribution—so their choice of which population estimate to use can reflect those implicit priorities [7] [2].
4. How to interpret these numbers and next steps for a precise answer
The best available practice is to treat the 95,000–130,000 range as current expert estimates of Minnesota’s unauthorized population in the early‑to‑mid 2020s, with the higher Pew‑derived 130,000 figure representing one reputable estimate for 2023 and other sources using more conservative estimates near 95,000 [1] [2] [3]. To get the exact count of people "found since 2025"—if that means enforcement encounters or new identifications—one would need DHS/ICE operational data or state law enforcement reporting covering 2025 onward; those records are not present in the supplied reporting and therefore were not analyzed here [1] [7]. In short: the supplied sources cannot answer the specific "since 2025" discovery tally; they do, however, show that Minnesota’s estimated unauthorized population in recent estimates sits roughly between about 95,000 and 130,000 depending on method and source [3] [1] [2].