BURSTSecretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said Thursday that the U.S. now has 1.6 million fewer illegal immigrants since the start of the Trump administration – a claim based on information from a restrictionist immigration group that said their own estimate may be overstated.
“In less than 200 days, 1.6 MILLION illegal immigrants have left the United States population. This is massive. This means safer streets, taxpayer savings, pressure off of schools and hospital services and better job opportunities for Americans,” Noem wrote in a social media post thanking President Trump.
The claim, the Department of Homeland Security said, is based on a report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which describes itself as a “low immigration” advocate.
CIS identified several “caveats” to its estimate, which it said is based on immigrants' willingness to respond to the Current Population Survey (CPS) crafted by the Census Bureau and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which CIS said “does not specifically identify illegal immigrants.”
“Given the recent stepped-up enforcement efforts, it is possible that immigrants have become more reluctant to respond to the CPS,” the report states.
“If this is the case, then our estimate of illegal immigrants based on the survey may be overstating the decline in their actual numbers. Further, our estimate of legal immigrants based on administrative data through July of 2025 is incomplete, further increasing uncertainty of our estimate of illegal immigrants. All this should be kept in mind when interpreting the figures presented here.”
Estimates of the number of people unlawfully living in the U.S. typically hover around 13 million.
The 1.6 million estimate from CIS would also represent a sharp jump from the Department of Homeland Security’s previously released figures, as it has touted both deportations and voluntary departures.
The Trump administration said in April that it had deported 135,000 people, but that figure has also come under scrutiny, with the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) saying the figures were “gross exaggerations” and that deportation figures at the time were actually around 72,000.
TRAC also said immigration judges this year have ordered just more than 360,000 people to be deported, though it's unclear when those removals will be carried out.
The Trump administration has also started new programs encouraging immigrants to leave the country, offering a $1,000 stipend to those who register to leave through the CBP Home App, a redesign of an app started under former President Biden allowing migrants to request an appointment to seek asylum.