US saw negative net migration in 2025, first time in decades: Report
For the first time in decades, net migration for the United States was likely negative in 2025, and the trend could continue amid President Donald Trump's aggressive immigration enforcement actions, according to a new think tank report.
A "significant" drop-off in new entries into the country coupled with an increase in immigration enforcement activity leading to increased removals and voluntary departures contributed to the close to zero or negative net migration, according to a report released Jan. 13 from the Brookings Institution. Net migration for 2025 was estimated in the report to be between -10,000 and -295,000.
Negative net migration – when more people leave the country than enter – hasn't been seen in the United States in at least 50 years, the report said.
"For 2026, we project net migration is likely to remain in negative territory," Brookings said, noting that a recent reduction in data transparency makes the estimates more uncertain. "The slowdown implies weaker employment, GDP, and consumer spending growth."
Trump admin policies driving the migration decline, report finds
The sharp drop in migration flows is due to "dramatic" changes in immigration policies under the Trump administration, Brookings said. That includes a suspension of refugee programs and humanitarian parole programs.
Trump has also sent federal immigration agents into Democratic-led cities in waves of escalated immigration enforcement actions over the last several months. The increased patrols and immigration sweeps have prompted outcry from protesters and sometimes led to clashes. Most recently, during a surge of agents to Minneapolis, an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot a U.S. citizen a week ago.
The Brookings report estimate of net migration is lower than that of the Congressional Budget Office, which this month said its projection of net migration for 2025 was about 410,000, also a significant decline from its previous prediction of 2 million for the year. In both estimates, policy actions by the Trump administration were the driving factor in the decline.
"The CBO estimate includes fewer deportations than our estimate, and CBO also assumes voluntary out-migration falls in response to increased enforcement activity, whereas we assume it rises," Brookings said to explain the difference.
Reduced border arrivals impacted 2025 migration flow
Though the administration has emphasized its removal efforts, the report found that a major slowdown of new arrivals into the United States, particularly through humanitarian parole and refugee programs and at the Southern border, had the biggest impact on reducing migration flows in 2025.
The report's authors looked at reported entries through the border, green card authorization numbers, refugee admittance trends and used year-over-year data to estimate other figures that the government hasn't recently updated, such as temporary visas issued. To estimate outflow factors, the authors considered removals, voluntary departures and normal factors that affect out-migration.
More: New data show the US's immigrant population declining dramatically. Is it true?People coming in through the border who were granted parole or a notice to appear for a later court date clocked in at about 67,000 to 70,000 in 2025, with many of those in the first month of the year (before Trump's second inauguration). In 2024, that number was about 1.41 million, Brookings said.
In 2026, the Brookings report authors predicted net immigration flow to be between –925,000 and +185,000.