By the Numbers: Data Shows Just How Dramatically Illegal Immigration Has Dropped Under Trump

Oct 30, 2026 7:57 PM
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By the Numbers: Data Shows Just How Dramatically Illegal Immigration Has Dropped Under Trump
AP Photo/Eric Gay

One of the top promises in the 2024 presidential campaign that President Donald Trump made was to turn around the catastrophe that was the open Southern border, leading to the immigration onslaught allowed and even encouraged by previous Democrat presidents, Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

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On Friday, we got a useful reminder of how far the U.S. has come in just a bit short of two years, with a thread shared on X showing data on how things are vastly better than they were.

Of course, as readers likely recall, some of the millions of aliens were brought in through the TPS policy, begun under Obama and ramped up under Biden, which invited special groups of asylum seekers to enter and stay in the United States.

The Trump administration canceled many of those instances of special treatment - and sent them packing.

Trump also scrapped CBP One, the Biden-Harris administration's controversial program that would fast-track illegal immigrants' Customs and Border Protection (CBP) appointments via a cell phone app, as we previously wrote. 

One important part of the plan to clear the country of illegals - which many on the Left put down as too tough to accomplish with so many set up in the American homeland - was to get some of them to leave on their own and return home.

Trump 47 incentivized them with a plane ticket home and some cash to get them settled in - and it worked. 

How well did it work? In just about 21 months, this administration has convinced more illegal immigrants to go home voluntarily than Obama did in six years - that's a remarkable one-third of the time frame.

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My colleague Becky Noble noted in an informative piece earlier, about the Trump administration's announcement that it might revoke the visas of the people organizing and sponsoring the next wave of illegal alien caravans, some of the strong promises on immigration that have been kept during the president's tenure:

Large caravans of illegal aliens were a common sight throughout the Biden administration. But under President Trump's watch, that has all changed. More than 605,000 illegal aliens have been deported during the Trump administration, and an additional 1.9 million have self-deported, the highest level in American history. In 21 months of President Trump's second term, there have been more voluntary departures than in six years of Obama combined, for a grand total of over 2.5 million.

Prowler wrote on one X post, with graphs showing the Republicans' other big immigration wins, like the number of visa revocations, the soaring count of illegals arrested by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), and the high number of ICE removal flights.

 Verifiably, Trump has the largest effort of de-legalization, denaturalization, visa revocation and real deportations, on top of the greatest cuts to overall legal immigration in over a century.

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RedState has written about there being room for improvement on getting this problem solved, when it comes to H-1B visa abusers. Maybe Washington, D.C., can learn from the Texas agriculture commissioner's recent move, and can focus a little more over the next two years, with - fingers crossed - a friendly Congress working with Pres. Trump.

The social media compilation of win after win on drawing down the deluge of illegals earned a hearty thumbs-up from the White House:

This is what I voted for, and what I'm voting for when I cast my ballot on Nov. 3. We need to make sure things keep going in the right direction under Republican leadership, on the state and federal level, because we saw what happened when Democrats were in charge of things.

Editor’s Note: We voted for mass deportations, not mass amnesty. Help us continue to fight back against those trying to go against the will of the American people. 

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