Breaking
A new analysis of Census Bureau survey data released September 3 shows the United States’ foreign-born population fell from approximately 53.3 million in January 2025 to 50.5 million in July 2026 — a drop of nearly 3 million people in 18 months. Center for Immigration Studies researchers Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler, who conducted the analysis using the government’s monthly household survey, said the decline includes an estimated 2.3 million fewer illegal immigrants and roughly 600,000 fewer legal immigrants.
Camarota said “the best data we have shows an enormous decrease in the total foreign-born population, with most of the falloff among illegal immigrants,” adding that the trend marks “net migration to the United States was negative in the last year and a half for the first time since the 1930s.” The Census Bureau’s own figures back up the shift, showing net international migration plunging from 2.7 million in 2024 to roughly 1.3 million in 2025 — a pace not seen in nearly a century of record-keeping.
Details & Background
The decline represents a sharp reversal from the prior four years, when the foreign-born population grew by 8.3 million between January 2021 and January 2025 — a period the report refers to as the “Biden border surge.” The Department of Homeland Security has separately estimated that millions of illegal immigrants have left the country since Trump returned to office, citing a mix of deportations, self-deportations, and reduced new arrivals under stepped-up border enforcement, including expanded ICE operations and the end of several Biden-era parole programs.
Researchers were careful to flag a limitation in the data: “it is possible that some of the recent decline reflects immigrants’ increased unwillingness to take part in the survey rather than their leaving the country.” Even accounting for that caveat, the size and consistency of the drop across multiple months led Camarota and Zeigler to conclude the trend is real and substantial, not just a statistical artifact — a conclusion bolstered by the Census Bureau’s own independent migration estimates pointing in the same direction.
Reactions
Perhaps the most notable finding for the ongoing economic debate over mass deportation: only about 44 percent of those accounted for in the decline were workers, well below the roughly 60 percent labor-force participation rate typical of the broader population. The report suggests this composition — skewed toward children, the elderly, and other non-workers — helps explain why the falloff has not produced the kind of nationwide economic disruption critics of Trump’s mass-deportation agenda predicted.
The report notes that U.S.-born workers gained jobs over the same period, further tempering fears of a labor shortage. Immigration advocates and some economists have warned in other contexts that mass departures could strain industries reliant on immigrant labor, such as agriculture and construction, though this particular analysis does not break out sector-specific impacts or include direct pushback from those critics.
Why This Matters to You
For an administration that has made border enforcement and deportations a centerpiece of its second term, this is the clearest population-level data yet that policy is translating into a measurable demographic shift — not just anecdotal reports of raids and removals. It’s the kind of hard number the administration is likely to point to heading into the midterms as proof its immigration approach is working as promised.
At the same time, the data invites scrutiny on both sides: supporters will cite it as vindication of enforcement-first policy, while critics may question the survey’s reliance on self-reporting from a population that has strong incentives to avoid being counted at all right now. Either way, expect this Census snapshot to become a reference point in the immigration debate through November, as both parties look for hard numbers to back up their competing narratives on the economy and border security.
