OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
4:14 PM – Thursday, August 14, 2025
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem has announced that the United States now has 1.6 million less illegal immigrants in the country since the beginning of the second Trump administration.
“In less than 200 days, 1.6 MILLION illegal immigrants have left the United States population,” said Noem in a press release on Thursday. “This is massive. This means safer streets, taxpayer savings, pressure off of schools and hospital services and better job opportunities for Americans. Thank you, President Trump!”
Noem was sworn in as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on January 25th, five days after President Donald Trump’s second inauguration.
The press release also mentioned the “international, multimillion-dollar ad campaign warning illegal aliens to LEAVE NOW” that Noem launched in her first 200 days as secretary.
Noem’s claim is based on a report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which gave a preliminary estimate that the number of illegal immigrants had fallen by 1.6 million in the last six months, “likely due to increased out-migration in response to stepped-up enforcement.”
The CIS study provided an analysis of the Current Population Survey (CPS), which showed an unprecedented decline in the foreign-born population (legal and illegal) of 2.2 million between January and July, which was “the largest six-month decline ever within the same year.”
The authors of the analysis conceded, however, that their finding comes with “caveats.”
“It is possible that the observed decline in the foreign-born was due, at least in part, to a greater reluctance by immigrants to participate in the survey or to identify as foreign-born,” the report said.
The CIS report also reasoned that not all administrative data necessary to estimate the population of people unlawfully living in the U.S. is currently available, and that their analysis is “only preliminary.”
Nevertheless, the White House released a press statement on Wednesday, with an update on the current administration’s victories against illegal immigration.
The White House referenced a CNN article that reported that “President Donald Trump moves to report as many as 1 million immigrants a year from the U.S.” If this is the president’s goal, then the current estimated number touted by Noem has far surpassed his expectations in only half of the time.
The current administration may continue to see a rise in deportations as they have recently announced they received over 100,000 applicants to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as a result of their recent recruitment campaign offering several new benefits to recruits.
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