Trump Cuts Migrant Population by Nearly 3 Million; Total U.S. Population Likely to Drop

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.”

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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.

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