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There are some 320 million people in the U.S., and 43 million of them were born abroad. About 11 million people are undocumented and over 5.1 million children have at least one undocumented parent. 860,000 people have applied for temporary legal status because they were brought to the U.S. without proper documentation as children. Over 500,000 people are waiting for their cases to be heard in immigration courts. Some 270,000 people in the U.S. came as refugees. On any given day, about 40,000 people are in immigration detention.

The numbers surrounding immigration can be daunting and hard to track down. In this tipsheet, you’ll go through some of the most useful datasets available and talk about some of the data that’s a bit tougher to find. It talks about how to use that data to get leads on local and national stories — and what to do when the government is not providing data about its immigration actions.