In Numbers—2025: A Turning Point

White Papers has been publishing these In Numbers briefings for more than three years now. Prior to this report, each of those briefings was at risk of inducing depression in the reader. The immigration figures White Papers highlighted at the time were horrific and showed the Great Replacement happening in real time. The Biden administration was allowing people in in such numbers that they dwarfed the populations of entire states.

The In Numbers report for 2023 showed that the Biden administration was encountering (admitting) more than 304,000 immigrants per month on the average. We also used previous academic and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data on gotaways and those estimated to be crossing the border without detection to show that the real numbers crossing our border each month were anywhere from 500,000 to 850,000 people. It was a disaster. The official DHS numbers for that year showed 2.86 million illegals were encountered at our border (and admitted into our country). That is a population equivalent to the population of the state of Kansas. Our estimates, using our gotaway and undetected crossings numbers, showed that anywhere from 5.2 million to 8.9 million people likely entered our country in 2023, or populations the size of those of Alabama and Tennessee respectively.

The figures from our In Numbers report for 2024 were no better. At the time of its writing in March of 2024 (halfway through the fiscal year), the Biden Administration had encountered 1.5 million illegal aliens at our frontiers. This is a population of people equivalent to the population of New Hampshire or Hawaii. At that rate it was likely that, just like in 2023, 3 million illegal aliens would be detected and admitted at our borders while the gotaways and undetected numbers of illegal aliens would likely swell the number to 7.2 million illegal entrants for fiscal year 2024—the same figure as fiscal year 2023. When fiscal 2024 came to a close, the CBP enforcement statistics did indeed match our expectations, and 2.9 million illegal aliens were encountered at our frontiers. This means we imported at least another Kansas and likely another Tennessee’s worth of people.

Now, I have been asked to write the In Numbers report for the close of the 2025 fiscal year. This time, it does NOT feel like a slog. It feels like an honor to bring our readers an In Numbers report that is entirely positive!

The overall number of encounters collapsed to 665,985 as of August 2025 (the fiscal year ended in September, but the shutdown means the data cannot be updated right now). Of these encounters for fiscal year 2025 some 473,694, or 71%, were before the current Trump administration took office. Since taking office encounters at our frontiers average roughly 29,000 per month and the Trump administration has implemented a ‘zero release’ policy that means most months none of those encountered at our border are released into our country. They are detained for swift deportation.

Those deportations have been swift, too. The Trump administration claims to have deported 400,000 illegal aliens while a further 1.6 million illegal aliens are believed to have left of their own volition. Furthermore, DHS plans to have deported a total of 600,000 people by January of 2026—when Trump celebrates his first full year back in office. These are not idle boasts, either.

We covered this development before, but it is worth repeating here. The data initial published by the Center for Immigration Studies (and roundly mocked by the mainstream media) estimates that the foreign-born population of the United States declined by 2.2 million people since Trump took office. [Overall Foreign-Born Population Down 2.2 Million January to July Steven A. Camarota and Karen Zeigler, CIS.org, August 12, 2025].

The Pew Research Center and numerous mainstream media outlets have since confirmed that the foreign-born population has dropped by at least 1.5-2 million individuals since Trump took office in January.

America has become more American for the first time in 60 years. Not only that, but recent reporting from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows that employment for native-born Americans has increased by 2.4 million since January while employment for foreign-born works has been reduced by 1 million jobs. America is healing.

Then there are the recent polls. While the mainstream media is attempting to make it seem like Americans are becoming fed up with Trump’s deportation-centered agenda, nothing could be further from the truth. A Harvard Harris poll published on October 9^th showed that 53% of Americans support deporting all illegal aliens present in the country regardless of criminal background or working status. This poll was followed just a day later by a NYT/Siena poll showing that 56% of Americans support deporting all illegal aliens and that 62% of White Americans support deporting all illegal aliens. Whites were the only large racial group in the survey to show majority support for these deportations. Hispanics showed 27% support for deporting all illegals, and just  34% of Blacks voiced support for deporting all illegals

On top of all this fantastic news about illegal immigration, we now have the developments occurring with legal migrants. First, the administration paused all refugee admittance in the United States except for White South African refugees fleeing the anti-White and quasi-genocidal policies of their home country.

This state of affairs appears to be a permanent development with the State Departments FY 2026 budget request stating only 7,500 refugees will be admitted to the United States per year going forward and that most of them will be White South Africans fleeing persecution. This is a dramatic and decidedly positive departure from the last 50 years. Between 1975 and 2025, more than 72,600 refugees have been resettled in the US every year according to the Migration Policy Institute. These five decades of refugee admissions accounts for an astonishing 3.661 million refugees admitted to the US.

Developments continue outside of the ‘irregular’ immigration system as well. The Secretary of State Marco Rubio paused the issuance of any truck driving visas for foreign-born truckers. The administration also ceased processing Green Cards for people currently resident in the country with refugee and asylee status. The administration is also tackling the massive abuse of our H1B ‘best and the brightest’ system and has begun what is merely a first phase in its massive crackdown on H1B visa abuse by implementing more stringent vetting and $100,000 first time application fees. Forbes is reporting that the next phase in this H1B crackdown will be a massive tightening on who exactly qualifies as ‘highly skilled,’ and the rule change will likely place serious limits on when, where, and how H1B visa holders can work. In short, getting an H1B is about to get much, much, more difficult.

Finally, the administration is dealing with the problem of abuses of our broader legal immigration system. In a first-of-its-kind operation, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) conducted a nine-day enforcement action in Minnesota known as “Operation Twin Shields” that paid visits to more than 1,000 immigrants and conducted document reviews as well as in-person interviews. USCIS found that 44% of the cases they looked into involved fraud, crime, or national security concerns. Immigrants brandished fake marriage licenses, others had fabricated death certificates, and several were engaged in fraudulent marriages.

If these operations continue and the fraud rate remains above 40%, then some 5 million or more legal immigrants are likely to caught, charged, and ultimately deported from this country.

There is certainly a lot more work to do to reverse the decades and decades of demographic, cultural, and social damage done to the United States by mass immigration but for the first time in almost 60 years this country is indisputably on the right track.