A new study shows the number of immigrants in the US illegally has fallen to 11 million since 2009, largely because of a drop-off in the number of Mexicans without legal status.
The report by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center - using survey data from 2015 - showed the number of immigrants lacking legal status was 11.3 million in 2009 and 11 million in 2015.
A preliminary estimate for 2016, taken from USA census data collected in March 2016 during former President Obama's previous year in office, put the number of illegal immigrants at 11.3 million.
The number of undocumented immigrants living in the United States has steadily declined over the past 10 years, amid a significant decrease in the share of Mexicans living in the country without legal status, a new report finds.
Pew didn't give a reason for the decline.
Such findings, however, are unlikely to push the Trump administration away from its plans to ramp up immigration enforcement along the USA border with Mexico - at a cost of tens of billions of dollars.
During the Great Recession, the illegal immigrant population started to decline from a decade high of 12.2 million in 2007 and then leveled off over the following years.
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Central America and Asia are the second and third most common birth regions for unauthorized immigrants in the US, after Mexico.
In 2014, the number of immigrants in the country illegally was 11.1 million, with Mexicans accounting for about 5.9 million of that population. In 2015, the number of Mexican illegal aliens fell to 5.6 million - about 51 percent of the total illegal immigrant population.
It is estimated that 2016 was the first year since 2005 that Mexicans have not made up the majority of the unauthorized immigrant population.
There were about 5.6 million Mexican immigrants in the country illegally in 2015, down from 6.4 million in 2009.
In 2014, they numbered 5.8 million (52% of the total).
However, a more recent data source about unauthorized immigration, the number of apprehensions at the Southwest border, fell in January, February and March after ticking upward last spring and fall, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics. It noted that the figures do not take into account the impact of any policy changes that have been put in place by President Trump, which include a crackdown on undocumented immigrants and tighter security at the border.
Central American migration to the United States, meanwhile, has grown. The shift came following a surge in unaccompanied children and families from El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua arriving on the U.S. -Mexico border seeking asylum. Undocumented Asians grew to 1.5 million in 2015 from 1.3 million in 2009.
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