Measurable and Stunning 18-Month Decline in Number of Foreign Born Living in the US

This is, without a doubt, because the bulk of the intensive research they put out isn't at all what immigration advocates want to hear.

The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit, research organization. Since our founding in 1985 by Otis Graham Jr., we have pursued a single mission – providing immigration policymakers, the academic community, news media, and concerned citizens with reliable information about the social, economic, environmental, security, and fiscal consequences of legal and illegal immigration into the United States. Our staff has testified before Congress over 150 times.

We are the nation’s only think tank devoted exclusively to the research of U.S. immigration policy to inform policymakers and the public about immigration’s far-reaching impact. The Center is animated by a unique pro-immigrant, low-immigration vision which seeks fewer immigrants but a warmer welcome for those admitted.

The Center is governed by a diverse board of directors that has included active and retired university professors, civil rights leaders, and former government officials. Our research and analysis has been funded by contributions and grants from dozens of private foundations, from the U.S. Census Bureau and Justice Department, and from generous individual donors.

Our board, our staff, our researchers, and our contributor base are not predominantly "liberal" or predominantly "conservative." Instead, we believe in common that debates about immigration policy that are well-informed and grounded in objective data will lead to better immigration policies.

The data collected by the Center during the past quarter-century has led many of our researchers to conclude that current, high levels of immigration are making it harder to achieve such important national objectives as better public schools, a cleaner environment, homeland security, and a living wage for every native-born and immigrant worker. These data may support criticism of US immigration policies, but they do not justify ill feelings toward our immigrant community.

The CIS staff combs through voluminous government reports and other sources to compile its datasets, and its most recent release is both a heartening number and an impressive achievement for an administration in its first year.

In the 18 months from January 2025 to July of this year, the number of foreign-born people in the country has declined by 2.9 million.

Like, I'm sorry - HOLY SMOKES. Now, that's a number.

📉 NEW DATA: Since January 2025 when President Trump took office, data shows an unprecedented 2.9 MILLION DECLINE in the foreign-born population — naturalized citizens, lawful permanent residents, long-term temporary visitors, and illegal immigrants.https://t.co/UJQWD7qcjP

— Center for Immigration Studies (@CIS_org) September 3, 2026

When you dig into the Center's deep research into every aspect of the overall decline, it's evident what a momentous and abrupt reversal this has been.

Their 'key findings' hit the highlights:

Key findings:

• The total foreign-born population declined 2.9 million from January 2025 to July 2026. This follows an 8.3 million increase in the prior four years during the post-Covid border surge.
• The huge recent decline in the foreign-born population indicates that net migration to the United States was negative in the last year and a half for the first time since the 1930s.
• Latin American non-citizens who arrived in 1980 or later account for all of the decrease. This population overlaps significantly with illegal immigrants.
• We preliminarily estimate that the illegal immigrant population may have declined 2.3 million, from 15.8 million in January of 2025 to 13.5 million in July of 2026. The net change reflects new arrivals offset by deportations, voluntary emigration, legalizations, and natural mortality.
• Only 44 percent of the decline in the foreign-born are workers; the rest are children, the elderly, and other non-workers. This fact, along with employment gains by the U.S.-born, mitigates the impact on the labor market and may help explain why the survey of businesses does not show a dramatic decline in workers.
• 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, though we have no clear evidence of this. Survey response rates are not correlated with the size of the foreign-born population. Further, the share of respondents not answering immigration-related questions remains low and unchanged.
• As the report explains, the CPS methodology complicates the story somewhat because a decline in the foreign-born population creates an apparent increase in the U.S.-born population as a statistical artifact.

But their detailed breakdown of each point is what's fascinating. First and foremost are the numbers that should make every American sick to their stomach. What Barack Obama started and what mentally challenged Joe Biden's handlers supercharged when he was in office - the floodgates were open.

Their chart in the piece describes the foreign-born population as having 'exploded' under Biden.

...A Large Increase, Then Decrease in the Foreign-born. Figure 1 reports the total number of foreign-born residents in the United States each January from 2009 to 2026 and July 2026, the most recent data available. Comparing January to January, and July of this year, is one way of looking at trends without being distracted by monthly fluctuations given the survey’s relatively large margin of error. Figure 2 shows every month over this same period with a confidence interval around each month. Both figures show that growth during the Biden administration was dramatically greater than in prior administrations. The 8.3 million increase under President Biden was the largest increase in any four-year period in American history.⁵ Since January 2025 the foreign-born population has fallen by 2.9 million through July 2026. A decline of this size means net migration must have been negative in the last year, a topic we discuss in greater detail later in this report. Further, despite fluctuations in the size of the foreign-born population, the clear upward trend followed by a dramatic downward trend does track well with changes in the nation’s immigration policies, from a highly permissive approach to immigration during the Biden administration to the more restrictive policies during the second Trump administration.

8.3 MILLION - THE LARGEST INCREASE IN ANY FOUR-YEAR PERIOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY

Unconscionable and unforgivable.

Another interesting factoid to come out of parsing the survey data is that the decline is mostly in non-workers - children and older folks. Aren't these also the ones who tend to use the most public services?

Inquiring minds want to know...

...Most of the Decline Is Among Non-Workers. Figure 4 reports the decline in the number of foreign-born residents who are working vs. those who do not work, with January 2025 as the starting point. The number of immigrant workers has declined by a little less than 1.3 million, but the number of non-working immigrants is down 1.6 million. Overall, only 44 percent of the decline in immigrants is among workers, even though 60 percent of the foreign-born were workers in January 2025. Those who are not working are primarily children, the elderly, full-time caregivers, and others who are not employed. The disproportionate decline among non-workers, along with employment gains by the U.S.-born mitigates the labor market impact of the decline in immigrant workers and may help explain why the survey of businesses that measures nonfarm payroll employment still shows an increase in jobs held.⁸

They also detail how they tease out the illegal numbers and their region of origin.

...Illegal Immigrants in the CPS. Based on prior trends and the limited administrative data available, we preliminarily estimate that the post-1980 legal immigrant population was 31.6 million in July 2026.¹² Subtracting this number from the 44.7 million post-1980 immigrants in the July CPS produces an estimate of 13.1 million illegal immigrants in the data.¹³ Making the same adjustment for undercount in the data as we did in our earlier analysis puts the total illegal immigrant population at 13.5 million in July 2026. If correct, this would represent an extraordinary decline of 2.3 million, or 14.6 percent in the illegal immigrant population since January 2025 (see Figure 5). It should be emphasized that the decline represents the total net change in the overall size of the illegal population, and reflects new arrivals offset by deportations, voluntary emigration, mortality, and legalizations.

Decline in Non-Citizen Latin Americans. Respondents to the CPS are asked when they came to the United States. As already discussed, illegal immigrants should show up in Census Bureau surveys as having arrived in 1980 or later. They should also identify as non-citizens. Prior research by DHS, the Pew Research Center, the Center for Migration Studies, and the Migration Policy Institute all indicate that roughly three-fourths of illegal immigrants are from Latin America. We also know that roughly 80 percent of those encountered at the nation’s borders during the border surge were from Latin American countries. As a result, the size of the non-citizen Latin American population who arrived in 1980 or later is highly correlated with the illegal immigrant population. Figure 6 shows the number of post-1980 non-citizen Latin Americans increased dramatically from January 2021 to December 2024, and since January 2025 their number have declined precipitously. Without making any assumptions about legal or illegal immigrants in the data, these results strongly support the idea that the election of Donald Trump, his rhetoric, high-profile enforcement actions, and border policies have caused a very large decline in the number of illegal immigrants in the country.

These numbers track with the revamped deportation and self-deportation figures, and if the current efforts hold up, by 2029, a promise will have been kept, in spite of everything the opposition could throw at Trump.

🚨NEW: Census Bureau Survey Shows Foreign-Born Population Down 2.9 Million Over Last 18 Months:

"The total foreign-born population declined 2.9 million from January 2025 to July 2026... The huge recent decline in the foreign-born population indicates that net migration to the… pic.twitter.com/BwZ4NOW0Vf

— Morse Report (@MorseReport) September 3, 2026

...The huge recent decline in the foreign-born population indicates that net migration to the United States was negative in the last year and a half for the first time since the 1930s."

If the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown continues at its current pace, the United States will see a reduction of approximately 15.3 million in its foreign-born population by the end of President Trump’s second term in January 2029 -- the lowest national foreign-born population since 2010.

This is also not accounting for the future, where the changes the administration has made in federal welfare benefits and immigrant assistance, visa programs, birthright schemes, and immigration rules have made the immigration process more difficult legally, and there are far fewer incentives and far more punitive remedies for coming illegally.

Imagine if this administration didn't have an organized resistance to battle every step of the way and had a judicial system more attuned to following the law than making it?

We'd be well on our way to having our country back.

Beege ADDS: It already has benefits for Americans you rarely hear about, but they are real.

I can agree with this running logistics/transpo business as well.

I have made more in the last six months then the whole year of 2024.🤷

— 1912 American (@X1912PatriotX) September 3, 2026