The Associated Press has obtained and analyzed records covering 4.5 million migrants released in the United States at the border, and has published a detailed account of how it built the dataset. The figure is one of the largest single counts of border releases reported to date by a news organization.

The AP piece is a methodology note rather than a policy announcement. It explains where the records came from, how reporters structured them, and what checks they applied before publishing any conclusions. For readers of Passport File, that matters for a simple reason: numbers about border releases drive policy debates, and the quality of those numbers depends on how they were assembled.

What does the dataset cover?

The records concern migrants who were released into the United States at the border — a category distinct from deportation, detention, or asylum approval. A release typically means a migrant was allowed to enter or remain in the country while an immigration case moves forward.

The scale is the headline: 4.5 million people. That figure spans the releases captured in the records AP obtained, and it forms the base population for the agency's analysis.

How did AP get the data?

AP says it obtained the records and then worked through them to make them usable for analysis. Its published note walks through the main steps:

• obtaining the underlying records covering the 4.5 million releases;
• structuring and cleaning the raw material;
• cross-checking figures against official reporting;
• stating plainly what the data can and cannot show.

In short, the agency treated the release records as a dataset to be verified, not a set of claims to be repeated.

Why does the method note matter?

Border statistics are contested terrain. Different agencies count arrivals, encounters, releases, and removals in different ways, and a single umbrella figure can hide very different legal outcomes. By publishing its method, AP lets other journalists, researchers, and policymakers test the numbers rather than take them on faith.

The 4.5 million figure is also an anchor for public debate. Any argument about the scale of releases at the border now has a documented reference point, with the sourcing laid out step by step. Readers should still check which time period and which release categories the dataset spans before citing the number in a specific context.

Passport File will follow the substantive findings that AP and other outlets draw from this dataset as they appear.

By Elena Vasquez