By Stephen Dinan (The Washington Times)
President Trump has cut the illegal immigrant population by 2.3 million since he took office, according to a preliminary analysis of government numbers to be released Thursday.
The legal immigrant population is also down, falling by some 600,000 from January 2025 to July 2026, according to calculations from the Center for Immigration Studies.
The numbers mark the first time in nearly a century — since the 1930s — that the U.S. has recorded a sustained net decrease in migration. In fact, the country’s overall population is likely to show an unprecedented decline, said Steven A. Camarota, the center’s research director.
“We’ve never seen anything quite like this before,” Mr. Camarota told The Washington Times. “This is big and sustained, as best as we can tell.”
He said the drop is directly attributable to Mr. Trump’s stricter immigration policy, which has formally deported hundreds of thousands of migrants and pressured many more to leave on their own — or “self-deport.”
The change is all the more striking after the four years under President Biden, when the country added some 8.3 million immigrants to its population, the largest surge in history.
“It is a fundamental change, and it’s profound,” Mr. Camarota said.
His estimates are based on the Current Population Survey, which underpins the monthly unemployment rate. It asks about place of birth and, although the survey does not specifically ask about legal status, demographers have found ways to infer status from the date and circumstances of someone’s arrival.
Illegal immigrants include those in the U.S. under “parole” or those seeking asylum who have not yet been granted status.
Mr. Camarota calculated that the illegal immigrant population stood at 15.8 million in January 2025 but slipped to 13.5 million as of July. That is a net figure, weighing new arrivals against departures, deaths and those gaining legal status.
The total foreign-born population dropped from 53.3 million to 50.5 million over the first 18 months of Mr. Trump’s presidency.
Among the legal population, Mr. Camarota said, fewer people are arriving in the first place. That includes refugees and foreign students.
Some 44% of those who left were workforce participants. That was significantly lower than the overall working rate of the illegal immigrant population, which approaches 60%.
Mr. Camarota said workers may be sending their families home but remaining in the country themselves.
The relatively low number of workers also could be why Mr. Trump’s deportation campaign has not resulted in a significant national economic disruption.
Still, some regional economies have reported struggles, such as construction in South Texas.
The drop in illegal immigrants, although significant, is lower than the Homeland Security Department’s own published figures.
In January, at the one-year mark of the Trump presidency, the department said it had removed nearly 3 million illegal immigrants from the country, including 675,000 compelled deportations and 2.2 million self-deportations.
At least some of the differences can be attributed to different methodologies. The department is measuring departures, while Mr. Camarota’s study looks at net increases and decreases, which offset the outflow with new arrivals.
The Census Bureau showed early signs of a population stall in January, reporting that the country’s population grew by 0.5% from July 1, 2024, to July 1, 2025.
Even though the reporting period captured only a little more than five months of the Trump presidency, Census Bureau analysts said the population stall was a result of a “historic” drop in net international migration.
A population drop would be uncharted territory for the modern U.S. economy.
“It’s nothing to panic about,” Mr. Camarota said. “First of all, we’re mostly losing low-income workers. But like anything else, it can create challenges. And it creates winners and losers.”
Workers will likely be winners, with fewer people competing for jobs and housing. Employers and homeowners, though, could be affected by fewer consumers, fewer job applicants and less pressure for home value increases.
The loss of immigrants will mean somewhat less tax revenue, but Mr. Camarota said that will be offset by a decrease in benefit costs. His research has found that more than half of households headed by illegal immigrants use some welfare, usually through their U.S.-born children.
“On balance, I think it’s a good deal for the country because I think most people are more worried about wages, housing prices, congestion and impact on schools and hospitals,” he said.
In response to an inquiry for this report, the Homeland Security Department sent a previous press release citing low border crossings.
The CPS surveys about 60,000 households, covering roughly 110,000 individuals, a large sample that still produces a significant margin of error. The foreign-born population could be a million higher or lower than the 50.5 million estimate.
Even with that margin of error, the long-term trend indicates a clear drop.
This article was made available to WMAL via The Washington Times.
