For the first time in at least fifty years, the United States experienced negative net migration in 2025, a development that says far more about policy than population trends.
According to a report released Tuesday by the Brookings Institution, the shift is largely the result of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, which has sharply reduced entries into the country while increasing removals and voluntary departures. The numbers are striking not because they are mysterious, but because they reflect the predictable outcome of an administration that made immigration enforcement a central governing priority.
Brookings estimates net migration for 2025 fell somewhere between minus 295,000 and minus 10,000 people. Even the high end of that range would represent a historic break from decades of steady population growth fueled by immigration. The authors note that while enforcement actions played a role, the dominant factor was a collapse in new arrivals. Fewer people entered the country legally or illegally, and that decline alone was enough to push net migration into negative territory.
Several policy decisions contributed to that outcome. The Trump administration suspended or sharply limited many humanitarian programs, including most refugee admissions, and significantly reduced the issuance of temporary visas.
Combined with increased enforcement pressure, those moves altered the incentive structure that had driven migration flows for years. Brookings also projects that negative net migration is likely to continue into 2026, citing ongoing policy uncertainty and expanded enforcement capacity.
On removals, the report estimates between 310,000 and 315,000 people were removed in 2025, a figure notably lower than the more than 600,000 removals claimed by the Department of Homeland Security.
Brookings points out that this total is only modestly higher than the approximately 285,000 removals in 2024, suggesting that the headline impact of the crackdown lies less in mass deportations than in deterrence. People are not just being removed; they are deciding not to come in the first place.
Another notable shift is where enforcement is happening. Unlike previous years, most removals in 2025 were initiated by Customs and Border Protection from within the country’s interior rather than by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That distinction matters, even if ICE actions dominate media coverage, because it reflects a broader operational change rather than isolated high-profile incidents.
Brookings also highlights the economic consequences of this reversal. The report predicts that sectors serving immigrant-heavy populations will experience unexpectedly weak activity, with consumer spending projected to fall by between $60 billion and $110 billion across 2025 and 2026. That translates into slower growth in employment, GDP, and consumption, outcomes that will fuel further debate over the costs and benefits of strict enforcement.
