Trump’s immigration crackdown leads to sharp decline in US population growth

The nation's population reached nearly 342 million people – but its growth rate has plummeted

The United States experienced a significant slowdown in its population growth rate in 2025, a trend attributed in part to Donald Trump's immigration policies, according to new estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. The nation's population reached 341.8 million people, but its growth rate plummeted to 0.5 per cent.

This figure marks a sharp decline from the nearly 1 per cent growth recorded in 2024, which had been the highest since 2001 and was largely driven by immigration. The previous year's estimates had placed the U.S. population at 340 million.

Immigration saw a substantial decrease, with an increase of 1.3 million people last year, a stark contrast to the 2.8 million recorded in 2024. The census report, however, did not differentiate between legal and undocumented immigration.

Historically, the lowest growth rate in the past 125 years occurred in 2021, at the peak of the coronavirus pandemic. During that period, the U.S. population expanded by just 0.16 per cent, or 522,000 individuals, with immigration contributing only 376,000 people due to stringent travel restrictions.

Before that, the lowest growth rate was just under 0.5% in 1919 at the height of the Spanish flu.

Births outnumbered deaths last year by 519,000 people.

ICE agents make arrests as part of animmigration enforcement surge across the Chicago region. (Getty Images)

The immigration drop dented growth in several states that traditionally have been immigrant magnets.

California had a net population loss of 9,500 people in 2025, a stark change from the previous year, when it gained 232,000 residents, even though roughly the same number of Californians already living in the state moved out in both years.

The difference was immigration since the number of net immigrants who moved into the state dropped from 361,000 people in 2024 to 109,000 in 2025.

Florida had year-to-year drops in both immigrants and people moving in from other states. The Sunshine State, which has become more expensive in recent years from surging property values and higher home insurance costs, had only 22,000 domestic migrants in 2025, compared with 64,000 people in 2024, and the net number of immigrants dropped from more than 411,000 people to 178,000 people.

New York added only 1,008 people in 2025, mostly because the state's net migration from immigrants dropped from 207,000 people to 95,600 people.

Tuesday's data release comes as researchers have been trying to determine the effects of the second Trump administration's immigration crackdown after the Republican president returned to the White House in January 2025. Trump made the surge of migrants at the southern border a central issue in his winning 2024 presidential campaign.

The numbers made public Tuesday reflect change from July 2024 to July 2025, covering the end of President Joe Biden's Democratic administration and the first half of Trump's first year back in office.

The figures capture a period that reflects the beginning of enforcement surges in Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, but do not capture the impact on immigration after the Trump administration's crackdowns began in Chicago; New Orleans; Memphis, Tennessee; and Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Federal immigration officers prepare to enter a home to make an arrest in Minneapolis. (AP)

The 2025 numbers were a jarring divergence from 2024, when net international migration accounted for 84% of the nation's 3.3 million-person increase from the year before. The jump in immigration two years ago was partly because of a new method of counting that added people who were admitted for humanitarian reasons.

"They do reflect recent trends we have seen in out-migration, where the numbers of people coming in is down and the numbers going out is up," Eric Jensen, a senior research scientist at the Census Bureau, said last week.

Unlike the once-a-decade census, which determines how many congressional seats and Electoral College votes each state gets, as well as the distribution of $2.8 trillion in annual government funding, the population estimates are calculated from government records and internal Census Bureau data.

The release of the 2025 population estimates was delayed by the federal government shutdown last fall and comes at a challenging time for the Census Bureau and other U.S. statistical agencies. The bureau, which is the largest statistical agency in the U.S., lost about 15% of its workforce last year due to buyouts and layoffs that were part of cost-cutting efforts by the White House and its Department of Government Efficiency.

Other recent actions by the Trump administration, such as the firing of Erika McEntarfer as Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, have raised concerns about political meddling at U.S. statistical agencies. But Brookings demographer William Frey said the bureau's staffers appear to have been "doing this work as usual without interference."

"So I have no reason to doubt the numbers that come out," Frey said.