Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, it is estimated that over 800,000 Russians have fled the country, seeking to escape political repression, military service, economic downturn, or a combination of these factors.
An estimated 48,000 are believed to have relocated to the United States, though the true number may be significantly higher. U.S. border authorities have recorded 70,025 encounters with Russian nationals since the beginning of the war, making Russians the second-largest nationality from outside the hemisphere encountered at the border in the past five years, and the largest in 2021 and 2022.
Although many of these migrants were likely denied entry or left voluntarily, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data shows that only 392 Russians have been deported during this period.
Despite these high numbers, irregular Russian migration remains relatively under-researched. Limited access to data, declining encounter numbers since spring 2023, and shifts in focus toward other migrant groups and conflicts have all contributed to the lack of study on this population.
This data guide aims to fill this gap by analyzing the publicly available sources that document recent trends in irregular Russian migration. The findings provide insight into the motivations and pathways chosen by these migrants, offer implications for U.S.-Russia relations, and highlight potential indicators of future irregular migration waves from outside the hemisphere.
Timeline of irregular Russian migration
Since 2021, there have been three distinct spikes in border encounters with Russian nationals. The first began in the summer of 2021 and peaked in December of that year. Numbers declined during the first two months of 2022 before surging again to a second peak in May 2022. After a brief dip in the summer, the third spike began in September 2022, reaching a record high of 7,912 encounters in December 2022. This was followed by a steady decline throughout 2023 and 2024.
This pattern aligns closely with major political events in Russia. Anti-government protests over the arrest of former opposition leader Alexei Navalny lasted through the spring of 2021 and were followed by protests over alleged fraud in the September parliamentary elections. The Navalny protests were among the largest in Russia in over a decade, with research showing that many participants were newly politically disaffected. This wave of unrest likely contributed to the initial surge of migration that peaked in December 2021.
The second wave can be largely attributed to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Initial uncertainty over the war’s duration may have prevented an even larger exodus at first, but the announcement of new mobilization orders in September 2022 signaled that the Russian military was preparing for a prolonged conflict.
The mobilization orders triggered a mass exodus, forming the third wave of migration. This surge continued until early 2023, when Russia began implementing travel restrictions for eligible draftees. Around the same time, the U.S. resumed deportation flights to Russia, contributing to a steady decline in encounter numbers that has continued to the present.
Routes and travel characteristics
Compared to previous data guides by the Niskanen Center on irregular Chinese and Indian migration, even fewer data sources exist for tracking Russian migrants in transit. This is because most Russians only pass through Mexico on their way to the border. Russian passport holders can obtain an e-visa to enter Mexico in just a few hours for under $40 USD, thus avoiding the more dangerous and difficult journeys many other migrants take through South and Central America.
As a result, Russians have not appeared among the top 35 nationalities in the Darién Gap reports published by the Panamanian government. Similarly, Honduran irregular migration data shows only 99 encounters with Russian migrants since 2020, compared to over 12,000 for Indian nationals and more than 22,000 with Chinese nationals during the same period.
Although Mexican immigration authorities do track encounters with irregular Russian migrants, many appear to go unrecorded. From January 2021 to July 2024, the average monthly number of encounters with Russians in Mexico was only 4% of the corresponding U.S. encounters. By comparison, the averages for Indian and Chinese nationals were significantly higher, at 28% and 31%, respectively. This trend has only strengthened in recent months.
Mexican immigration authorities seem to miss these migrants because they initially enter Mexico as tourists. By analyzing tourism statistics provided by the Mexican Secretary of Tourism, which offer monthly arrival data categorized by nationality, gender, and airport from 2012 onward, it is possible to detect shifts in Russian travel patterns that indicate irregular migration.
Focusing on Russian nationals arriving by air from 2020 to 2024 reveals several intriguing trends. The data shows a clear increase in Russians using Mexican tourist visas as a gateway for irregular migration following the start of the war. In the two years before the invasion, the Cancún airport accounted for 77% of Russian tourist arrivals in Mexico. However, due to its considerable distance from the U.S. border, Cancún is not an ideal starting point for a journey northward, and the data suggests that Russian migrants have planned their routes accordingly.
Most irregular Russian migrants instead prefer to arrive in Mexico City, which offers more affordable and flexible flight options to border cities like Tijuana and better access to ground transportation. This preference is evident in the changing entry patterns: Cancún’s share of Russian tourist arrivals fell from 77% before the war to 60% in 2022 and then plummeted to just 33% in 2023. During the same period, Mexico City’s share surged dramatically, accounting for 60% of Russian tourist entries in 2023.
This trend is shared by other groups prone to irregular migration and is not observed among other European travelers. Furthermore, arrivals at Monterrey’s northern border airport also increased significantly, from 216 to 847 during this period. This sharp rise makes it difficult to attribute these changes to anything other than an increase in irregular migration.
Prior to the war, Russian tourism to Mexico was predominantly female, with women making up 58% of Russian tourists in 2020 and 55% in 2021. However, this proportion shifted in 2022, dropping to 50.06% and remaining relatively balanced at 50.69 in 2023.
This change could reflect the impact of the September mobilization order, which prompted a surge of young men to flee Russia. The male percentage of Russian tourists spiked between September and December 2022, peaking at 58% in October, before gradually returning to pre-war levels around October 2023.
Due to the growing use of the Mexico City-Tijuana route, most U.S. border encounters with Russian nationals occur in the San Diego Sector or Field Office. The spike in encounters at the Laredo Sector in 2023 can also partly be attributed to the increased number of Russian tourist arrivals at Monterrey’s airport. However, regional flights and ground transportation from Mexico City likely account for the majority of encounters in that sector as well.
At a broader scale, the shifts in Russian travel patterns to Mexico that coincided with irregular Russian migration could serve as a valuable model for tracking and predicting future waves of irregular migration from outside the hemisphere that use similar routes.
Demographic data
Analyzing the demographic characteristics of Russian migrants is similarly challenging. The two primary sources for such information are the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Nationwide Encounters database and the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) data on immigration courts.
The CBP data categorizes encountered migrants as single adults, part of a family unit, or as accompanied or unaccompanied minors. For Russian migrants, these proportions have remained relatively stable: 57-61% are encountered in family units, 39-43% as single adults, and less than 1% as minors.
This suggests that Russian migrants tend to be slightly older compared to other extra-hemispheric immigrant groups, a trend also reflected in the TRAC data. In 2023, the majority of Russian nationals with new cases in U.S. immigration court were within the age range of young parents and their children.
Russian migrants also stand out in terms of their gender ratio compared to other major extra-hemispheric groups, which tend to be predominantly male. Although the TRAC data shows that Russian migrants are still majority male, their proportion hovers around the mid-50% range, significantly lower than the 70% or higher typically seen in other migrant groups from outside the hemisphere.
The settlement patterns of newly arrived irregular Russian migrants closely mirror those of the established Russian immigrant diaspora. According to TRAC data, 13 of the 15 top counties of residence for recent arrivals overlap with the top counties identified in the Migration Policy Institute’s model of the Russian diaspora’s distribution. Irregular Russian migrants appear to be heavily concentrated in a few cities in New York and California, whereas the broader Russian diaspora is more evenly spread across states along the eastern seaboard.
Finally, the TRAC data does not indicate that Russian ethnic or linguistic minority groups make up a significant number of irregular Russian migrants.
Asylum success rates
Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, 6,110 Russians have been granted asylum. However, this should not be interpreted as an indication that most of these individuals received asylum specifically for fleeing or protesting the war. According to the Immigration Court Asylum Backlog tracker, a Russian national who filed for asylum in 2022 will wait an average of 1,114 days until their asylum hearing.
Given that the invasion began less than three years ago, it is likely that even the Russians who applied for asylum shortly after the war began are still awaiting their hearing. Nevertheless, the war has almost certainly been cited as a contributing factor in ongoing asylum cases. Approval rates for Russian asylum claims have steadily increased since 2020, coinciding with a significant rise in the number of cases being processed.
Future considerations
The sustained decline in border encounters suggests a tacitly shared conclusion by the U.S., Russia, and Mexico that large-scale irregular Russian migration to the U.S. does not presently benefit any side.
While the Biden administration initially expressed support for accepting more Russian asylum seekers at the start of the war and even proposed measures to facilitate Russian brain drain, heightened levels of domestic concern about border encounter numbers have made it difficult to pursue creative strategic applications of immigration policy. By early 2023, the U.S. resumed deportations of Russians and later implemented measures to limit asylum claims at the border.
For Russia, though some experts argue that an exile community primarily located overseas benefits Vladimir Putin, the urgent need to replenish troops to make up for devastating losses in Ukraine has taken top priority. The Russian government continues to introduce new internal travel restrictions even as it sometimes chafes at measures to deter Russian emigration taken by other countries.
And even as international tourism in Mexico continues to struggle in 2024, U.S. pressure over immigration and Russia’s increasing presence in Mexico have almost certainly factored into the historically high rates of Russian travelers arriving in Mexico who are refused entry into the country.
And even as international tourism in Mexico continues to struggle in 2024, U.S. pressure over immigration and Russia’s increasing presence in Mexico have almost certainly factored into the historically high rates of Russian travelers arriving in Mexico who are refused entry into the country.
In addition to the high costs of traveling to the U.S. and the relatively easier access to Central Asian countries, these factors make it unlikely that another wave of irregular migration will occur unless Russia relaxes its restrictions or decides it is in its interest to encourage emigration.