Methodology
Immigration statistics are easy to misread because similar-sounding metrics measure very different things. Here is exactly what each number means — and what it does not.
Metrics that are not the same thing
An administrative arrest is the start of a process. Many arrests do not end in removal, and a person can be arrested in one year and removed in another. The two counts are not interchangeable.
Removals are a flow over a fiscal year. Detention population is a stock — the number of people held at a point in time (often reported as an average daily population). Adding them together is meaningless.
An encounter is an event at or near the border (an apprehension or inadmissibility determination). One person can be encountered multiple times. Encounters are not removals and are not unique people.
A Labor Condition Application is a prerequisite an employer files with the Department of Labor. It is not a visa, not a petition, and not an approval. Many LCAs are never used.
USCIS approves petitions inside the immigration system. The State Department issues visas at consulates abroad. A person can have an approved petition without a visa issuance in the same year, and vice versa.
WARN notices record that layoffs happened. They contain no information about who, if anyone, was hired afterward. Layoff data does not prove replacement by H-1B or any other workers.
Reporting periods & data freshness
Sources update on different schedules, so each counter shows the latest available reporting period for its dataset — not a single fixed year. We never present a stale figure as the headline when newer data exists, and every card is labelled so you know exactly what you are looking at:
- Complete A finished fiscal year with final published totals (e.g. CBP encounters FY2025).
- YTD Fiscal-year-to-date — the current fiscal year is still in progress, so the total is partial (e.g. border encounters FY2026 YTD).
- Preliminary The agency’s latest release that has not yet been finalized and may be revised (e.g. FY2025 H-1B petition totals).
- Point-in-time A snapshot on a specific date rather than a running total (e.g. the ICE detention population, which is a count on one day).
- Est. pace A projected full-year figure, scaling a year-to-date total by the share of the fiscal year elapsed. An estimate, not an official total.
Where a source lags — USCIS’s employer-level H-1B Data Hub and DOL’s wage disclosures run roughly a year behind — the latest available complete year (FY2024) is shown and labelled as such, rather than guessing at unpublished newer figures. Toggle the dashboard between Latest available, Last complete fiscal year, and 5-year trend to compare. We use “latest available” and “YTD,” never “real-time,” because the underlying sources are not live feeds.
Why some counters are estimated
Different agencies publish on different calendars — some monthly, some quarterly, some only once a year. When a fiscal year is still in progress, we show the latest reported value and, where labelled pace est., project a full-year figure by scaling the year-to-date total by the share of the fiscal year elapsed. Projections assume the current pace continues; they are estimates, not official totals, and will be revised as new data lands.
The U.S. federal fiscal year runs from October 1 to September 30. “This fiscal year” counters therefore accumulate from October, not January.
Tracked subsets vs national totals
Employer, state, and occupation views are built from a curated set of large, public H-1B sponsors. These are a meaningful sample, not the entire country. National counters (for example, total H-1B approvals or border encounters) are drawn from agency-wide totals and are labelled accordingly.
What this site will not do
- No individual immigrant profiles, tracking, or identifying personal data.
- No reporting of specific enforcement operations or locations of people.
- No claims that immigrants caused layoffs, or that sponsorship displaced specific workers.
- No dehumanizing language, slurs, or inflammatory framing.
Every figure links to its public source. See the sources page for the full list, and the refresh status page for when each dataset was last updated.