Donald Trump's immigration policy is already causing a historic demographic shift in the United States. A preliminary analysis of official data estimates that the immigrant population in the country has fallen by nearly 3 million people since January 2025, while overall population growth could come to a complete halt and even enter negative territory.
According to calculations made by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), the population of illegal immigrants dropped from approximately 15.8 million in January 2025 to 13.5 million in July 2026, a net reduction of 2.3 million.
This figure is complemented by an estimated drop of another 600,000 legal immigrants, bringing the total decline of the foreign-born population to nearly 2.9 million during the first 18 months of the Trump administration.
Trump's immigration policy changes the trend
Researcher Steven A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, noted that the United States is undergoing a transformation that has no recent precedent.
“We have never seen anything like this”, he stated while analyzing the data, asserting that the decline is broad and sustained.
According to his estimates, the change is directly related to the tightening of immigration policy implemented by Trump since his return to the White House.
The strategy combines formal deportations, stricter border controls, and increasing pressure for unauthorized immigrants to leave the United States voluntarily, a phenomenon known as “self-deportation.”
The immigrant population fell by nearly 3 million
Camarota's calculation uses information from the Current Population Survey, the survey that serves as one of the main sources for calculating U.S. unemployment monthly.
The data shows that the illegal population would have dropped from 15.8 million to 13.5 million between January 2025 and July 2026.
The foreign-born population as a whole also recorded a significant decrease: it fell from about 53.3 million to 50.5 million.
This implies that the change is not solely explained by deportations. It also involves people who left the country voluntarily, new arrivals, deaths, and those who obtained some form of legal status.
The analysis itself acknowledges a considerable margin of error due to the characteristics of the survey. The foreign population could be up to a million higher or lower than the central estimate.
However, even taking that margin into account, the downward trend is clearly evident.
The contrast with the Biden years
The shift is even more significant when compared to the Joe Biden administration.
During the previous four years, the United States incorporated approximately 8.3 million immigrants into its population, according to estimates cited in the analysis. It was one of the largest immigration increases recorded in U.S. history.
With Trump, the trend reversed abruptly.
The result is a profound transformation of the country's demographic dynamics: less immigration, less population growth, and much less pressure on certain labor and housing markets.
