For the first time in decades, more immigrants are leaving the United States than arriving, a new study finds, an early indication that President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda is leading people to depart — whether through deportation or by choice.
An analysis of new census data released Thursday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that between January and June, the foreign-born population in the United States — both lawful and unlawful residents — declined by nearly 1.5 million. In June, the country was home to 51.9 million immigrants, down from 53.3 million six months earlier.
Officials from the Trump administration have applauded the net outflow, asserting that pressures on government services have eased and that job markets have rebounded. And some supporters of the immigration crackdown say it hasn’t gone far enough.
But experts predict looming negative economic and demographic consequences for the United States if the trend persists. Immigrants are a crucial workforce in many sectors, and the country’s reliance on them is growing as more baby boomers retire.
After campaigning on a promise of mass deportations, Trump has introduced sweeping measures to reduce immigration. His administration has restricted access to asylum at the southern border, tightened visa requirements for students and tech workers and deployed thousands of federal agents to detain and deport immigrants without lawful status. The crackdown has led immigrants to leave the country voluntarily and has discouraged others from coming.
Lillian Divina Leite, 46, chose to use the government’s new self-deportation program to return to Brazil. A housekeeper in Charlotte, North Carolina, Leite said that she had begun to panic when she saw immigrants being “hunted down like hardened criminals.”
“I got really scared,” said Leite, who had fallen out of legal status after overstaying a six-month tourist visa.
“I thought, I haven’t done anything wrong in my life,” she said, “and suddenly I could be imprisoned.”
Despite the study’s findings, Kevin Lynn, executive director of the Institute for Sound Public Policy, which advocates for less immigration, said that foreign workers who enter lawfully continue to pour into the United States and undermine Americans.
“There has been no letup,” he said. “People coming here legally, whether on green cards or employment visas, are impacting American workers at all strata, whether low-skilled or high-skilled.”
Net migration — the difference between the number of immigrants arriving and departing — has turned negative, a shift that the chief Pew demographer, Jeffrey Passel, called a “demographic certainty” so far in 2025. His team’s analysis did not calculate a separate number for immigrants without lawful status who seem likely to represent the largest number of departures, because heightened enforcement probably diminished immigrants’ participation in the census survey that was used to make estimates, he said.
They may have been undercounted, which would suggest the drop is not as severe, or their low participation could mask an even more striking decline.
The United States experienced negative net immigration in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, when between 400,000 and 1 million Mexicans and Mexican Americans left, many under coercive repatriation programs.
In July, the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute projected net migration in 2025 would be flat or would even drop and predicted that the Trump administration’s policies would continue to squeeze out low- and high-skilled foreign workers at least through 2026.
“A rapid decline in immigration is going to cause economic harm,” said Tara Watson, an economist at the Brookings Institution and one of the authors of the report.
Political pushback and legal challenges could lead the Trump administration to ease its crackdown and, thus, soften the impact, she said. But legislation recently passed by the Republican-controlled Congress has significantly increased funding for immigration enforcement, suggesting that the restrictive approach could extend throughout Trump’s term.
If so, “we could go into a spiral of continued decline,” said Watson, which could undermine U.S. competitiveness for global talent.
“If things are really bad, we no longer are the place where people go to do science or tech, and that could have generational repercussions,” she said.
On Day 1 in office, Trump signed several immigration-related orders. Since then, his administration has intensified efforts to curb immigration, and the president recently celebrated the prospect of negative net migration.
As he wrote in a Truth Social post on Aug. 4: “Promises made. Promises kept. Negative net migration for the first time in 50 years!”
In addition to targeting migrants without lawful status, the administration has introduced measures that have undermined legal immigration.
It has paused the refugee program, which offered green cards and a path to citizenship to people fleeing persecution. It has increased screening and vetting of visa applicants, which experts expect will reduce the numbers of foreign workers and students.
The Trump administration has ended several Biden-era programs that had allowed people from troubled countries such as Haiti to live and work temporarily in the United States. Thousands of immigrants are set to lose their protected status in coming months.
Migration across the southern border, which had begun to slow under asylum restrictions imposed late in the term of President Joe Biden, has declined further since Trump returned to office.
Employment opportunities have long been the primary draw for immigrants, with migration typically slowing during economic downturns. During the Great Recession, more Mexicans without authorized status left the United States than arrived.
But the current decline is unfolding in response to stringent policies and at a time when the United States needs immigration to offset a falling birthrate and an aging population.
“We have more and more people over 65 and not in the workforce,” said Dowell Myers, a demography professor at the University of Southern California. “A new baby won’t help us for 20 years, but a young immigrant helps us immediately.”
“If you take a sledgehammer to the labor force by cutting immigrant flows,” he said, “we are all going to be seeing the consequences in our everyday lives.”
Restaurants, farms and assisted-living facilities are already grappling with labor shortages that could become more pronounced, he said. Many of those roles are filled by unauthorized immigrants, whose population reached 14 million in 2023, according to Pew, and who accounted for 4% of the total U.S. population and about a quarter of the foreign-born population.
California had the most unauthorized residents in 2023, at 2.3 million, followed closely by Texas, with 2.1 million. Florida had the largest increase, adding 700,000 for a total of 1.6 million.
Through mid-2024, the unauthorized population continued to grow at a fast clip, before starting to contract following policy changes in 2025, according to a preliminary Pew analysis.
About half of the 14 million unauthorized immigrants in 2023 had been in the United States for more than a decade, and 4.6 million U.S.-born children have parents who are in the country without lawful status.
Pew’s estimates are based on an analysis of Census Bureau data, including the American Community Survey and the Current Population Survey.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is holding a record 60,000 immigrants in detention, and that number is expected to soar as planned facilities open. Confined immigrants often agree to be swiftly deported rather than languish in custody while awaiting court rulings on whether they can remain in the United States.
Aggressive enforcement has created a climate of fear, disrupting everyday life for immigrant families. Across the country, many are limiting outings. Reports that some deportees are being sent to third countries, including South Sudan, or to their broken home countries have led some to self-deport rather than risk being detained and deported.
Patrick Garcia, executive director of Embrace Carolinas, an advocacy group in Charlotte, North Carolina, is aware of at least 10 families who have self-deported to South and Central America.
“Something that was rare has become normal,” he said, adding that “my prediction is that departures will increase as Christmas and winter approach.”
“People are making as much money as they can to leave by the end of the year,” Garcia said.
Cratchit Aime, a Haitian immigrant in Springfield, Ohio, said he intended to return with his family to Brazil, where they had previously lived, to avoid being deported to his homeland.
“There’s no way we will go to Haiti — it’s under control of bandits,” he said, referring to gangs that control swaths of the country.
In Southern California, where arrests surged in June, some longtime immigrants without lawful status are choosing to depart on their own terms.
“They’d rather leave with something after decades of work here, rather than be detained and deported with nothing,” said Luz Gallegos, executive director of TODEC, an immigrant services provider in Riverside County.
On May 18, Leite, the housekeeper in North Carolina, submitted information on the CBP Home app, the self-deportation app introduced by the Trump administration to encourage unauthorized immigrants to leave the country. By using it, she could be eligible for free airfare, two checked bags and $1,000 in cash after arriving in Brazil.
A few weeks later, she was notified by text message to call a number to work out logistics. She called repeatedly for a week, leaving voicemail messages that went unanswered.
Finally, on June 16, she received a call. Leite was booked on a United Airlines flight leaving on July 2 to Sao Paulo through Chicago. She landed in Brazil on July 3.
About two weeks later, she took delivery of $1,000 via Western Union.
“It’s a huge relief to be back home,” she said, adding that “police sirens still make me nervous.”
On social media, she has been busy offering tips for people who are eager to self-deport.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2025 The New York Times
