A border surge reshaped America. Now, data shows who 4.5 million migrants were and where they went

An unprecedented surge in border crossings over the past decade reshaped America: Millions of people from more than 150 countries arrived, bringing the U.S. immigrant population to its highest levels ever.

Now, data obtained exclusively by The Associated Press paints a picture of who these migrants are, where they went, and what happened after the border.

Some went to cities that have long been magnets for immigrants — New York, Miami — but increasingly, others found their way to smaller cities with less developed immigrant footholds. Blocks, neighborhoods and entire cities were remade in places like Elkhart, Indiana; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Dodge City, Kansas.

And while the vast majority of migrants traditionally were from Mexico, this surge saw people from an astonishing number and diversity of countries: India, Ecuador, Ghana.

Via a Freedom of Information Act request, AP obtained federal records on the self-reported destinations of 4.5 million migrants released in the United States after crossing the Mexican border — both legally and illegally — between October 2018 and July 2025.

Migrants must provide U.S. Customs and Border Protection with a street address. AP obtained their destination ZIP codes, citizenship by country, ages, genders, and the dates and border regions where they encountered authorities.

Some probably never arrived at the addresses they gave. Authorities lacked resources to check, though migrants must report truthfully to pursue their cases in court and get work permits. Some have moved elsewhere in the United States or left the countr y, voluntarily or involuntarily. But many have stayed put.

Data on their initial destinations after the southern border provides both a sweeping and an unusually granular look at how the immigration surge — one that peaked during President Joe Biden's administration and was a major reason voters returned his predecessor, Donald Trump, to the White House — is playing out today.

Here are some key takeaways from the data.

The Border Patrol encountered migrants from 174 countries in one year alone, a sharp departure from earlier periods when they were nearly all Mexican and Central American. The growth of social media and new migration routes was key in bringing people from around the world. Cincinnati, for example, saw a large number of arrivals from West Africa, Uzbekistan and India.

Some cities — ones that for generations have had robust international communities — were further diversified by the range of countries from which people arrived.

New York City’s Queens borough registered at least 25 nationalities with significant arrivals, including five countries that each sent more than 7,000 people: Ecuador, China, Colombia, Venezuela and India.

Philadelphia had 11 nationalities with at least 1,000 new arrivals, led by Brazil, Haiti and the Dominican Republic but also including Russia and Venezuela. The city’s metro area also saw more than 1,000 migrants from Georgia.

While Florida was the most popular state overall, Latin American immigrants increasingly looked elsewhere for more promising job prospects and better quality of life. Many turned to places with small but established communities of immigrants from their homelands.

For Cubans, nine of the top 10 destination ZIP codes were in Florida, but people of the Caribbean nation also flocked to Louisville, Kentucky; Grand Island, Nebraska; and Odessa, Texas. Colombians went to the Denver suburb of Aurora. Paterson, New Jersey, was the top pick among Peruvians. Some Venezuelans headed to the growing suburbs south of Salt Lake City; others to pockets of Atlanta, Chicago and Denver.

Nearly six of every 10 migrants released at the border were women and children, a dramatic shift from a few years earlier when migrants were predominantly men.

The change is visible in many places and across nationalities, but some stand out. Tulsa, Oklahoma, attracted Mexican women and children. Ecuadorian women and children went to Spring Valley, New York. Guatemalan women were drawn to Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Chinese migrants, who trekked by hundreds nightly in California's mountainous border with Mexico, largely gravitated to two places: New York City, especially the Queens and Brooklyn boroughs, and a cluster of neighborhoods in the Los Angeles area.

Immigration arrests have hit some areas that ranked among the most popular destinations for migrants in recent years, including Miami and New York. Others that saw a large migrant influx have gotten less attention from authorities, including California’s Silicon Valley; Madison, Wisconsin; and Stamford, Connecticut.

Harounat Sarre, a Mauritanian immigrant, pauses in the parking lot of Touba Tedoungal African restaurant in Lockland, Ohio, Friday, July 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Vincent Wilson, left, who takes in donated, broken bikes and offers them up to the community for anyone who helps fix them up, repairs a bike with the help of a seven-year-old boy at Bikes and Stuff in Lockland, Ohio, Friday, July 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Venezuelans gather outside a food truck on Wednesday, July 15, 2026, in Midvale, Utah. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

Moussa Sow, a Mauritanian immigrant, stands at the parking lot of Touba Tedoungal African restaurant in Lockland, Ohio, Friday, July 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

FILE - A group of people, including many from China, walk along the wall after crossing the border with Mexico to seek asylum, Oct. 24, 2023, near Jacumba, Calif. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)

A former Syrian military official convicted of torturing prisoners during President Bashar Assad's regime is facing a possible decades-long prison sentence in the U.S.

A federal judge in Los Angeles is scheduled to sentence Samir Ousman Alsheikh on Thursday. A jury found him guilty in March of one count of conspiracy to commit torture and three counts of torture while in charge of Syria's infamous Adra Prison from roughly 2005 to 2008.

Human rights groups and United Nations officials have accused the Syrian government of widespread abuses in its detention facilities, including torture and arbitrary detention of thousands of people, in many cases without informing their families.

Prosecutors say Alsheikh, seeking to quash political dissent, sent certain prisoners to a wing of Adra where they were held in small isolation cells and tortured.

At the two-week trial, three victims recounted beatings while suspended from pipes on the ceiling and the use of a device that folded their bodies in half at the waist. One person testified that Alsheikh stomped on the device with his foot, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

“Defendant knew that what he was doing was wrong,” DOJ prosecutors said in a sentencing memo filed this month. “Nonetheless he ordered and participated in the torture of his victims because he had the power to do so and because he thought he would never be held accountable.”

The memo included statements from several victims, one of whom, Nidal Shikhani, said he can “still hear the screams of others begging for mercy, repeating, ‘Leave me, leave me.’”

The prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Hernan D. Vera for a minimum sentence of 80 years. Alsheikh's attorneys, Nina Marino and Collin Cate, have called for a five-year sentence, noting that he is 74 years old and has “significant medical and cognitive conditions.”

They also said he was willing to be deported to Syria, where a new government has sought to hold former members of the Assad regime accountable.

“Whatever moral weight this case carries in the broader arc of history — however much the world, or the victims, or the public might wish the sentence to ‘send a message’ — that desire cannot be the foundation of a just sentence,” Marino and Cate wrote in their Sept. 3 memo.

Alsheikh came to the U.S. in 2020 and applied for citizenship, but prosecutors say he concealed his involvement in torture. Federal authorities detained him at Los Angeles International Airport in July 2024.

Jurors also convicted him in March of lying to U.S. immigration authorities and fraudulently obtaining a green card and attempting to naturalize as a U.S. citizen.

The exterior of the federal courthouse is seen March 27, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Eric Thayer, File)