Despite Trump’s Success, Immigration Isn’t ‘Solved’

The current news cycle would have one believe that President Trump’s immigration success is mostly due to ICE activity in major metropolitan areas. In truth, ICE deportations have accounted for only a relatively small part of the reduction in illegal immigration on Trump’s watch. The real key to his success has been securing the border – and the key to that has been enforcing existing immigration laws. But Trump’s considerable success to date does not mean that the immigration problem is “solved,” as the damage done by President Biden and others will take years to undo.

The Democrats and their attempted immigration finesse

Before Trump’s second term began, Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and her running mate Tim Walz insisted that the only way to stop the huge influx of illegal aliens pouring across the border on Biden’s watch was to have Congress pass sweeping immigration legislation. As it turned out, all that was really needed was a president willing to enforce the laws as written. Specifically, the Trump administration has detained those who are seeking asylum, as federal law requires – rather than releasing asylum-seekers (and others) into the country in plain violation of federal law, as Biden brazenly did for four years.

The contrast between Biden and Trump in this regard could hardly be starker. Based on official U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statistics, the Border Patrol under Biden released an average of 56,944 aliens into the United States per month. During Trump’s second term, the Border Patrol has released an average of just one alien per month. So, for every lone alien released under Trump, the Biden administration released enough to fill Dodger Stadium – doing so month after month.

Releasing even more

Those stats only cover releases by the Border Patrol, whose job is to patrol the open border. When also including releases by the Office of Field Operations (OFO) at the ports of entry, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released about 2 million aliens into the U.S. in fiscal year 2023 and another 1.5 million in 2024. That tally of 3.5 million releases in 24 months comes close to matching the entire population of Los Angeles (3.9 million).

Such releases were in defiance of federal law. The Immigration and Nationality Act says that “if an alien asserts a credible fear of persecution, he or she shall be detained for further consideration of the application for asylum.” Justice Samuel Alito writes that these detention “requirements, as we have held, are mandatory.” Yet the Biden administration flaunted this legal requirement at every turn, in the name of “equity.”

Biden v. Trump on immigration

Under Biden, aliens simply had to utter the magic word – “asylum” – and his administration would release them into the interior of the country. As Raul Ortiz – the Biden administration’s selection as U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) chief – put it, aliens were “turning themselves in to USBP officers rather than trying to escape the officers,” as they figured they were “going to be released.” The result, as U.S. District Court Judge T. Kent Wetherell wrote during a Biden-era case, was “akin to posting a flashing ‘Come In, Were Open’ sign on the southern border.”

Under Trump, aliens know they will no longer be released into the U.S., so they’re no longer flooding the border. The numbers tell the story. In the eight years preceding Biden, there was an average of 47,876 encounters per month with the USBP or OFO at the southwest border. Under Biden, that number almost quadrupled, to 183,038. But under Trump, encounters have dropped to 10,836 per month – a 94% decline. For every 16 people who tried to get across the southwest border per month under Biden, only one has tried under Trump.

Border open no more

Now that Trump has unplugged Biden’s neon “We’re Open” sign, the change in immigration patterns has been remarkable – even historic. From the start of the Obama presidency until Trump’s second inauguration, the foreign-born population among those age 16 and over rose from 35.0 million to 50.4 million, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics – a whopping 44% increase in just 16 years. Almost half of that increase was under Biden, even though he was only in office for a quarter of that time. During Trump’s second term, however, the (over-16) foreign-born population has dropped by 3%.

Let’s examine these figures on a more granular level. The (over-16) foreign-born population in the U.S. rose by 2,181 people per day under Obama and by 1,168 per day during Trump’s first four years in office. It then rose by 5,035 per day under Biden – more than twice the rate under Obama and more than quadruple the rate during Trump’s first term. Since the start of Trump’s second term, however, it has fallen by 4,602 per day – falling almost as quickly as it rose under Biden.

Reversing the flow

Changes in the (over-16) foreign-born population closely track with changes in the overall illegal-alien population. From January 2021 to January 2025, on Biden’s watch, the (over-16) foreign-born population rose by 7.4 million, per the BLS. From 2021 through 2024 (the same span of time, apart from a few weeks on either end), the number of illegal aliens rose by 7.1 million, per CBO estimates. Given how closely these two numbers tracked under Biden, the number of illegal aliens has probably been falling by about 4,500 per day under Trump, or by about 1.5 million overall in less than a year. (A DHS press release, which doesn’t cite supporting data, says that figure is 2.5 million, but the stats from BLS, a principal federal statistical agency, paired with those from the CBO, are presumably more reliable.)

So, after rising during every presidency in the past half-century – and then rising even faster under Biden – the increase in the number of illegal aliens hasn’t just slowed during the second Trump term. Rather, it has stopped entirely – and then gone the opposite way. Like a Disneyland tea cup that spins wildly in one direction before it’s yanked to a stop and then sent spinning in the other direction, Trump has taken a seemingly irreversible trend and reversed it almost immediately – a remarkable achievement.

Securing the border, not deportations, has produced the bulk of the reversal

Contrary to what has been suggested in most press coverage, the Trump administration has not achieved this historic immigration success principally through deportations. It is true that Biden’s DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas tied the hands of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, while Trump DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and White House “Border Czar” Tom Homan have emphasized the importance of interior enforcement. Thus, the Trump administration has been deporting illegal aliens – about 60% of whom have criminal records – whereas the Biden administration largely refused to do so, prioritizing “equity” over enforcement of the law.

Nevertheless, it appears that at most 25% of the drop in the foreign-born population since January has resulted from ICE deportations from the interior of the country. At least 75% of the reduction in the foreign-born population has resulted from securing the border – that is, from far fewer people entering illegally, paired with people leaving voluntarily.

Examining the statistics

This three-to-one ratio is based on DHS statistics on ICE removals. ICE reported 319,980 removals for all of fiscal year 2025, nearly a quarter of whom were aliens handed over to ICE at the border by the CBP, rather than those arrested in the nation’s interior. For the first roughly 100 days of fiscal year 2026, ICE reported 118,164 removals, and about one-sixth of those were handed over to ICE at the border.

So, ICE appears to be removing about 30,000 to 35,000 aliens per month from the interior of the country during the second Trump administration (some of whom are under age 16), out of a decline in the (over-16) foreign-born population of about 135,000 per month. (A DHS press release reported605,000 removals in less than 11 months – roughly 55,000 or 60,000 per month – but it didn’t cite supporting data and apparently includes ICE removals of aliens handed over at the border, not just removals from the interior.)

Decades of failure to secure our southwest border, culminating with Biden, have left America with such huge influxes of illegal aliens that assimilation has become quite challenging. By the time Biden left office, the portion of the U.S. population that’s foreign-born reached about 16.8% – the all-time record. In 1970, that number was 4.7%. Even during the great waves of immigration earlier in American history, the share of the U.S. population that was foreign-born peaked at 14.8% in 1890.

Foreign-born population fraction reduced

Under Trump, the portion of the U.S. population that’s foreign-born appears to have dipped back down to about 16.2%, wiping out the increase during Biden’s final year. While that’s a long way from 1970s levels, this marks the first change in trajectory in a downward direction under a new presidential administration since the 1910s. In other words, the turnaround so far under Trump is something we haven’t seen in more than a century.

But we still have not solved the immigration problem

Despite this great progress, it would be a mistake to view America’s immigration problem as “solved.” To use a football analogy, it’s more apt to say that the federal government’s longstanding, ill-conceived immigration policies and lackluster execution put America in a 35-0 hole, which ballooned to 56-0 during the short stint with Biden at quarterback. Under Trump, that margin has been cut to 56-7, as we’ve finally put points on the board and have the momentum. But we’re a long way from scoring the go-ahead touchdown.

Still, the Trump administration has now shown that it is possible, by enforcing existing laws, to secure the border. Indeed, Andrew Arthur, a former federal immigration judge now at the Center for Immigration Studies, said this past summer that “the Southwest border is more secure than it has ever been in history.” The Trump administration has also shown that if one secures the border – and isn’t entirely lax about interior enforcement – the foreign-born population in the U.S. will actually start dropping, instead of perpetually rising.

On the trend line established under this administration, the percentage of the population that is foreign-born could eventually return to historically normal levels. This salutary change would make patriotic assimilation – of the type that America excelled at for most of its history – much more feasible. But that will be a long process, and the work has just begun.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.