Four in Ten U.S. Counties Shrank Due to Immigration Policy

Four out of ten U.S. counties shrank last year as President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown continued to slow the country's main source of demographic growth. According to figures from the Census Bureau released on Thursday, about 1,270 counties lost residents in the year that ended on July 1, 2025. Miami-Dade County experienced the second-largest population increase in 2024, as international migration more than compensated for the decrease in new domestic residents. This represents almost a 20% increase over the same period the previous year and covers just five months of drastic changes in immigration policy under the Trump administration. Some of the most pronounced numerical declines were recorded in counties that include large cities with large immigrant populations, such as Los Angeles, San Diego, Miami, Dallas, and New York. This is largely due to a drastic slowdown in international immigration, which had driven much of the demographic growth after the pandemic. 'The largest counties are experiencing a greater impact than the smaller counties due to that substantial drop in international migration,' Bowers said. George Hayward, a Census demographer, stated that five states accounted for nearly half of the net international migration of the United States in the year that ended on July 1, 2025, and that just 10 counties represented nearly a quarter of the national increase. Approximately two-thirds of U.S. counties recorded more deaths than births last year, a level similar to that of 2024. The Census Bureau estimates that net migration, the number of immigrants minus the number of emigrants, fell to 1.3 million in the year that ended in July 2025, down from a peak of 2.7 million in 2024. Meanwhile, internal migration continues to cause people to move from more populous counties to less populous ones, according to the Census. This trend is likely to continue. Census officials project that migration will fall to around 321,000 in the year ending in July 2026 and stated earlier this year that the United States is 'trending toward negative migration' for the first time in more than 50 years. The profound demographic shift in the U.S. is evident in several key immigration centers. Population decreased by more than 10,000 people—0.4%—in the year that ended on July 1, 2025. The population growth rate in Harris County, which includes Houston and its suburbs, was cut in half for the same reason. 'Those trends that we've observed at the national level are also manifesting at the state and county level,' Lauren Bowers, chief of the Population Estimates Division at the Census Bureau, said in an interview. But the effects are also concentrated, she said. The 50 counties with a population of one million or more in 2025 recorded a net loss of internal migration of 637,634 people. Trump, whose promise to voters to crack down on undocumented immigrants contributed to his return to the White House, has intensified deportations of migrants and taken steps to limit legal immigration. While most U.S. counties recorded positive international migration last year, about nine out of ten experienced a decrease in the arrival of immigrants compared to 2024, according to Census data. According to Hayward, those areas were also the most affected by the decline in immigration. International migration to the U.S. peaked in 2024, following an unprecedented surge in border crossings during the Biden administration. The districts of Los Angeles, Queens and Brooklyn in New York, as well as Chicago, recorded the most significant declines in immigration. Demographic Chasm International migration has long contributed to U.S. population growth as Americans age and new generations have fewer children. Counties with populations between 50,000 and one million experienced a gain of nearly 534,000 people. Among counties with populations of at least 20,000, nine of the ten fastest-growing were in the southern part of the country. This includes counties like Jasper in South Carolina, near Savannah, Georgia, as well as others in the Houston, Dallas, and Austin areas. 'Immigration doesn't seem to be competing with internal migration: that is, internal migration to urban counties didn't decrease during the rise in immigration between 2022 and 2024 only to increase when immigration slowed in 2025,' said Jed Kolko, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, in a note. 'Rather, internal migration is being driven by affordability, as people leave expensive urban counties to move to more affordable suburban areas and smaller communities,' Kolko said. Since then, inflows have virtually stopped.