The intensification of migration processes in the modern world, threatening the national security of the state and generating an illegal flow of population migration, requires the creation of not only ad-ministrative and compulsory measures to combat this negative phenomenon, but also the formation of a scientifically based system of means of preventing illegal migration. This circumstance, accord-ing to the authors, actualizes the need for the formation of an administrative-legal institution of migra-tion search for illegal migrants within the framework of migration law as a sub-branch of Russian administrative law.
 In the presented scientific research, the authors consider one of the areas of preventing and pre-venting illegal migration in the Russian Federation, which is being formed as part of the ongoing re-form of modern Russian migration legislation - the implementation of migration search for illegal mi-grants. Based on an analysis of the theoretical provisions of the doctrine of human search, the au-thors offer their vision of the concept and essence of public search as a complex intersectoral institution, justify the need to introduce a special administrative and legal type of such search - migration search for illegal migrants. The concept of administrative-legal regulation of the implementation of migration search and the formation within the framework of migration law as a sub-branch of administrative law of the institution of migration search is proposed. This type of public search, according to the authors, is an administrative precautionary and preventive measure of administrative coercion, used by officials authorized in the field of migration, and should be carried out in administrative procedural forms determined by law.