Think Tank: US Foreign-Born Population Down 2.9 Million

The U.S. foreign-born population fell by an estimated 2.9 million between January 2025 and July 2026, according to a new Center for Immigration Studies analysis of Census Bureau survey data, which said the decline marked the first sustained drop since the 1930s.

The Washington think tank, which favors lower immigration levels, drew its estimate from the government's monthly Current Population Survey, a household survey conducted by the Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

CIS said the foreign-born category includes naturalized citizens, lawful permanent residents, long-term temporary visitors, and immigrants living in the country illegally.

CIS estimated that the illegal immigrant population accounts for most of the drop, falling from about 15.8 million in January 2025 to 13.5 million in July 2026, a decline of roughly 14.6%.

The net change reflects new arrivals offset by deportations, voluntary emigration, legalizations, and mortality, according to CIS.

CIS said Latin American noncitizens who arrived in 1980 or later account for the entire decrease and that the group overlaps heavily with the population living in the country illegally.

CIS estimated that the foreign-born population rose by 8.3 million in the four years before President Donald Trump returned to office, the largest four-year increase on record.

"The best data we have shows an enormous decrease in the total foreign-born population, with most of the falloff among illegal immigrants," Steven Camarota, the organization's research director and the report's lead author, said in a statement.

In January, the Census Bureau  projected  that net international migration would fall to roughly 321,000 in the year ending mid-2026, down from 2.7 million in 2024.

A Pew Research Center analysis in August 2025 found that the foreign-born population had fallen by more than 1 million by June of that year, the first decline since the 1960s.

Only 44% of the foreign-born decrease consists of workers, according to CIS, with the rest made up of children, the elderly, and other nonworkers — a mix the think tank said helps explain why employer payrolls have not shown a matching drop.

Interior enforcement has climbed sharply under Trump, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement detentions reaching a second-term high in July.

The July 2026 estimate carries a margin of error of about 1 million people at a 90% confidence level, and CIS said it cannot rule out that some of the drop reflects immigrants declining to participate in the survey, though it found no clear evidence of that.

According to the Brookings Institution , the Current Population Survey should not be treated as a definitive measure of net migration because it includes both legal and illegal immigrant populations and reflects deaths and departures as well as arrivals.

© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.