Immigration Policy Matters

National Review Online

Wednesday, September 09, 2026

 

Anew report from the Center for Immigration Studies suggests that the foreign-born population of the United States is down 2.9 million over the first 18 months of the Trump administration, and from this we can estimate that the population of illegal immigrants has fallen 2.3 million — from 15.8 million to 13.5 million. If these numbers extrapolated from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey withstand further scrutiny, the significance of this development is difficult to overstate. This would be the first time America’s net migration numbers have been negative — more immigrants leaving than coming in — since the 1930s.

 

Proponents of mass immigration have often argued that the movement of people across borders is practically unstoppable. Proponents of amnesty have argued that policy cannot remove illegal immigrants who have already arrived here, and that attempts to enforce the law backfire and bring about even more immigration.

 

It’s important to understand that these are not direct numbers for deportations or immigration. The Current Population Survey is not designed to measure immigrants and migration. But it does capture data from which researchers can make solid inferences over time. New lawful permanent residents and other new arrivals add to the foreign-born population each month. Deaths of foreign-born people living in America subtract from it. There is also a regular flow of foreign-born people who return to their home countries or travel to new ones.

 

The data from this survey captured the massive surge of the foreign-born population under former President Joe Biden, when the foreign-born population increased by 8.32 million in just four years, the fastest four-year increase of any period in American history. The CIS report notes that “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.” Over the past 18 months, by this account, Latin American noncitizens who arrived in 1980 or later account for all of the decrease in this population.

 

Not all of it, not by a long shot, is the result of interior enforcement. The best data we have suggest that 350,000 people were subject to some kind of enforcement act that led to their departure from the country in this 18-month time period. This enforcement pattern created incentives for others to leave voluntarily. Researchers Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler write, “Based on the data available, interior removals and voluntary departures could not by themselves account for the higher levels of emigration implied by the CPS. Voluntary emigration would have to have increased substantially for the foreign-born population to decline this much.” Overall, the numbers point to one overall conclusion — that “the number of people settling in the country legally and illegally has fallen significantly, while the number leaving has increased dramatically.”

 

The survey suggests that only 44 percent of the net decline is among workers. This lines up with the administration’s hands-off approach to the workplace. The Trump administration has practically exempted entire sectors, including hospitality, agriculture, and construction, from examination, allowing those sectors to continue to be labor gray zones, where illegal labor is tolerated, and increasingly a cultural and economic norm institutionally.

 

What can we conclude? The first is that President Trump has followed through dramatically on his promise to control immigration after a period of lawlessness and chaos under Biden. For this he should be commended. Second, the president and the Department of Homeland Security should step up workplace enforcement. The Republican Party has a proud tradition of fighting for a nation in which workers compete fairly on the same legal standing. Tight labor markets at the bottom end of the skills distribution raise the wages of poorer workers and spur innovation. Not every immigration enforcement action has to be a dramatic, GoPro-filmed kinetic action. Much of it involves carrying a briefcase and checking documentation.

 

Finally, and most important, these numbers refute the arguments of those who try to mystify the issue by portraying immigration as an uncontrollable feature of market economics or the process of globalization. Immigration can be controlled by policy and profoundly shaped by enforcement decisions. Self-deportation is a real phenomenon, and actions that increase voluntary compliance with our just laws should be redoubled. Commonsense enforcement is neither ruinously expensive nor injurious to the broader economy. The president is winning on this issue and should double down on his success.