US immigrant population declines for first time in half a century, research shows

For the first time in more than 50 years, the U.S. immigrant population is declining, with foreign-born residents either choosing to leave the country or being deported, according to the latest data from the Pew Research Center.

In January 2025, the immigrant population in the United States topped out at 53.3 million. That number shrank 2.6% to 51.9 million as of June 2025, marking the first decline in the U.S. immigrant population since the 1960s.

Put another way: There are now 1.4 million fewer immigrants living in the country just months after President Donald Trump took office again, according to the new report from Pew, a nonpartisan fact tank.

Mark Hugo Lopez, the director of race and ethnicity research at Pew Research Center, said a several factors may be contributing to the decline in population, including policy changes starting with the Biden administration, who put in new restrictions on asylum in mid-2024.

“There are a number of possible reasons from the natural ebb and flow of immigrants, but also policy, which has made it harder to cross the border and also increased enforcement in the U.S., all of which could be shaping the immigrant population and whether or not it grows or declines,” said Lopez.

An unprecedented number of immigrants — more than 11 million — arrived in the U.S. between 2020 and 2025, Pew researchers found. That included more than 3 million in 2023 alone, the largest annual total ever recorded, according to the Pew analysis of government data sources.

The unauthorized immigrant population, or those who lack full legal permission to be in the U.S., reached a record high of 14 million in 2023, the data show.

The organization gathered and analyzed data from the Census Bureau’s monthly Current Population Surveys. The recent downward trend in the estimated total U.S. immigrant population may be in part because fewer immigrants are participating in the survey, researchers noted.

California has the largest share of immigrants in the nation. In 2023, California was home to 11.3 million immigrants or 28.4% of the national total. Texas had the second-largest immigrant population with over 6 million foreign-born residents, followed by Florida and New York.

California also has the largest number of unauthorized immigrants, with 2.3 million. The state is ground zero for Trump’s crackdown, where his administration is leading high-profile raids in Los Angeles and issuing orders that target the state’s protections and benefits for immigrants.

Earlier this week, his administration took aim at a state law that allows undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses, accusing California politicians of responsibility for a fatal crash in Florida allegedly caused by a semitruck driver who lacked legal status. The driver had a federal work permit.

In the first 100 days of Trump’s second administration, the president took more than 100 executive actions on immigration, aiming to block the arrival of new migrants and refugees at the border, strip those who entered legally of their temporary protections, and deport unauthorized immigrants.

Trump has made some of the most significant changes to U.S. immigration policy in the nation’s history, vowing a massive deportation campaign with a reported goal of 1 million deportations in the first year.

The Pew research did not reveal the most recent numbers of deportations, and its report notes some immigrants may have left the country voluntarily as a result of the Trump administration’s crackdown. His administration has sent people to an El Salvadoran supermax prison where inmates claim they were tortured. Authorities have removed people to other countries where they have never lived, such as Panama and South Sudan, a country considered dangerous by the U.S. Department of State. Federal immigration agents in Los Angeles and other parts of California have aggressively detained immigrants and U.S. citizens, throwing people to the ground and smashing car windows.

Pew found that the policy and enforcement changes contributed to the decline in the immigrant population between January and June. Unauthorized border crossings fell to levels not seen since the 1960s. Arrests of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border fell to just under 8,000 in July, compared to about 96,000 in December, the last full month of the Biden presidency, according to U.S. government statistics.

This time around, Trump has focused his enforcement efforts more in the interior of the country, leaning on the military and surveillance technology to reinforce the border and moving Border Patrol agents away from it.

Ballet folklorico dancers perform with attendees at the 28th Annual Lemon Festival along Third Avenue in Chula Vista on Aug. 16, 2025.

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Adriana Heldiz

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CalMatters

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Inside the U.S., a large portion of immigrants, about 75%, are here legally, the Pew report says.

As of 2023, 46% of immigrants were naturalized U.S. citizens. Nearly a quarter were lawful permanent residents, or “green card holders,” and another 4% were lawful temporary residents who were permitted to stay in the U.S. for a limited period of time, usually for work or study.

The remaining immigrants in the U.S. fell into the “unauthorized” category and constituted 27% of all U.S. immigrants.

About 40% of unauthorized immigrants — about 6 million people — have some form of temporary protection from deportation, with some also having a permit to work in the United States legally.

The Trump administration has rescinded those deportation protections and work permits for about 500,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who entered the U.S. legally.

The countries where immigrants are coming from has also shifted in recent years. A growing share is coming from South America and Europe, and a declining share arrived from Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Still, nearly a quarter, 24%, of the new arrivals between 2021 and 2023 were from South and East Asia.

The top countries for immigrants who arrived between 2021 and 2023 were: Mexico (11%), India (8%), Venezuela (7%), Cuba (6%), and Colombia (5%).

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.