The foreign-born population of the United States has fallen by roughly 2 million since President Donald Trump took office, reversing the more than 7 million increase under President Joe Biden. Recent reporting shows why these deportations cannot come quickly enough, and new polling reveals a striking reality: although many legal immigrants are frustrated by the removals, they also overwhelmingly acknowledge that they are “necessary.”
The Current Population Survey, administered by the Census Bureau but published by the Labor Department every month, was not designed to track the foreign born population of the United States, but it is the best dataset we have and the most recent report, released this past Thursday shows that the foreign-born population aged 16 and older has fallen by 2 million since January of this year. The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that the total foreign-born decrease, including children, is 2.4 million. This would be the first decrease in over 50 years and comes after a record 7 million increase under Biden, most of whom had no legal right to enter.
By the end of Biden’s term, a record high 52 million immigrants were in the United States, comprising another record high 16% of the total population. And many of these immigrants are perfectly law-abiding people with a valid legal presence. But millions are not.
This week, the City Journal uncovered widespread fraud in Minnesota’s Somali community, which took advantage of the state’s Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program to enrich not only themselves, but also fund terrorists back in Africa. Created by Gov. Tim Walz, the HSS Program used federal and state taxpayer dollars to provide “housing services,” such as “housing consultation” and “moving expenses,” to people with disabilities, mental illness, and substance use disorders.
The fraudsters would sign people up for the program, bill the state, and then never provide the services. What was supposed to be an annual $2.6 million ended up costing taxpayers $104 million a year, with sizable portions of the money being sent back to the Al-Shabaab terrorist group in Africa. One confidential source told City Journal, “The largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer.”
This all comes after federal and Minnesota taxpayers were fleeced by the Feeding Our Future program in 2020, where members of the Somali community pocketed hundreds of millions in tax dollars for school lunches that were never provided.
In Charlotte, Democrats criticized Trump’s Charlotte’s Web immigration enforcement surge, noting that 30,000 students in Charlotte public schools, over 20% of the student body, failed to show up for class during the raid. That truly is an outrageous number, but not in the way Democrats think. If 20% of Charlotte public school students come from illegal immigrant households, that means thousands of native-born students are being weighted down with non-English speakers in their classrooms. If anything, the numbers show just how out of control the illegal immigrant population has gotten in some communities, only underscoring the need for deportations.
And in New York City, the proud socialist Zohran Mamdani won his election to be mayor in no small part due to his promise to strengthen and expand rent controls. While Mamdani’s rent protections would apply to natives and immigrants alike, it is highly relevant that 40% of all rent-stabilized housing in New York City is occupied by foreign-born residents. Seems New York City’s housing affordability crisis could largely be solved by some much-needed immigration law enforcement.
Enforcing immigration law is a difficult and thankless task. No one likes deporting migrants who have done nothing wrong but enter the country illegally (or illegally stayed past their temporary visa). But if we don’t enforce immigration law and just let everyone stay, then we really do not have a sovereign country. Few people recognize this better than legal immigrants.
According to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation/New York Times poll, while 49% of legal immigrant voters said Trump’s deportations made them angry, 46% also said the deportations were “necessary,” including 80% of Republican immigrants and 52% of independent immigrants. Asked in the same poll if the current immigration law was “too tough,” “not tough enough,” or “about right,” 61% of legal immigrant voters chose “about right.”
Trump’s mass deportations may be difficult, but the alternative is a country that tolerates rampant fraud, classrooms overwhelmed by non-English speakers, soaring housing costs, and a foreign-born population growing faster than the nation can absorb. Increasingly, even legal immigrants understand that real sovereignty demands enforcement, not empathy. Restoring order to the immigration system isn’t cruelty; it’s the necessary first step toward restoring strength and stability.