US Population Growth Slows Sharply With Trump’s Immigration Policies

India-West News Desk

WASHINGTON, DC – The pace of U.S. population growth slowed sharply in 2025, a decline that demographers and researchers are telling the media, is largely to President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration following his return to office.

According to population estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau on January 27, the U.S. population reached approximately 342 million people in 2025. The annual growth rate fell to 0.5 percent, roughly half the pace recorded in 2024, when growth surged to nearly 1 percent, the fastest increase in two decades.

The estimates measure population change between July 2024 and July 2025, a period that spans the final months of President Joe Biden’s administration and the first six months of Trump’s second term. Immigration played a decisive role in the slowdown. Trump moved quickly after taking office to intensify immigration restrictions.

If current trends persist, the Census Bureau projects that immigration gains could fall to just over 320,000 people by mid 2026. The bureau’s estimates do not distinguish between legal and unauthorized immigration.

The data reflect the early phase of enforcement surges in cities such as Los Angeles and Portland. They do not capture the effects of later crackdowns that began after July 2025 in Chicago, New Orleans, Memphis and Minneapolis, suggesting the demographic impact could deepen in the coming year.

The 2025 growth rate ranks among the weakest in modern U.S. history outside of national emergencies. The lowest rate in the past century occurred in 2021, during the COVID 19 pandemic. Prior to that, the last comparable slowdown was in 1919, during the Spanish flu pandemic.

The immigration slowdown had a pronounced effect on states that traditionally rely on new arrivals. California recorded a net population loss of 9,500 people in 2025. Florida also saw year to year declines in both immigrants and residents moving in from other states, as rising housing prices and insurance costs dampened growth. New York’s population was nearly flat, adding just over 1,000 people as immigrant arrivals dropped sharply.

South Carolina, Idaho and North Carolina posted the fastest percentage growth, while Texas and Florida added the most residents overall.