Trump's second-term immigration policy, the numbers speak for themselves
On January 20, 2025, as President Trump was drying the ink on the first signature of his second term, a banner reading “Seal the Border” hung in front of the White House. It's been 14 months since then. The immigration landscape in the United States has changed more dramatically than ever before, with the administration celebrating ‘historic progress‘ and critics warning of "unprecedented retreat. Both sides are cherry-picking the numbers in their favor. The Korean-American community is no exception: neither working professionals waiting for work visa renewals nor first-generation immigrants waiting for family-based green card processing are immune to these 14 months of change.
So today, I'm going to take the emotion and rhetoric out of the equation and just rattle off the numbers. What's gone down, what's gone up, what's stopped, and what's gone empty in 14 months. Let's unfold the midterm report card so you can judge for yourself how the numbers on the four scales paint the full picture. All numbers in this column are based on published or independent research data from official agencies such as CBP, ICE, USCIS, TRAC Institute, CBO, IMF, and others.
Numbers at the border: fewer things
“You can't manage what you can't measure. - Peter Drucker.”
The first noticeable change is in the statistics for illegal menstruation at the Southwest border. According to official data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), 21,815 migrants were apprehended by the Border Patrol on the Southwest border in the first quarter of fiscal year 2026 (October through December), the lowest on record for the first quarter of a fiscal year. Compared to the average for the same period during the Biden administration, this is a 95 percent decrease.
In the month of December 2025, there were 30,698 national arrests. That's a 92 percent decrease from 370,883 in December 2023, the peak of the Biden administration. It was also an all-time low for the month of December. Based on these numbers alone, border enforcement is a clear ‘win.
But there's a piece of context missing. The downward trend in illegal crossings actually began as early as March 2024. The decline accelerated after the Biden administration implemented measures in June of that year that drastically limited asylum applications at the southwest border, and the Mexican government's active cooperation in stopping movement within its borders played a large role. For the half-year period from July through December 2024, border apprehensions were on a steady downward curve. The Trump administration started on top of that downward curve, which had already begun to tilt. While it's hard to deny that the decline has been greater since the inauguration, the White House's rhetoric of a “94 percent decline since day one” incorporates contributions from the end of the previous administration.
As of December 2025, the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) has recorded eight consecutive months of ‘zero releases’. This means that the agency has completely stopped the practice of releasing apprehended migrants without detention or deportation proceedings. Compared to 7,041 releases during the same period in December 2024, this is a stark contrast to the previous administration.
Number of stays: What's new
“More prisons do not reduce crime. - Nelson Mandela”
Where some things have decreased, others have increased. The most dramatic increase is in the detention population. As of January 2026, ICE had about 73,000 people in custody, an 84 percent increase from about 40,000 at the same time the year before, the highest number in the agency's 23-year history. Doris Meissner, who served as director of immigration under the Clinton administration, called the number “unprecedented in modern history.” Of those detainees, about 67,000 are single adults awaiting deportation, and about 6,000 are families with minor children.
The composition of the detention population has also changed dramatically. The number of pure immigration violators with no criminal record in ICE custody has skyrocketed by more than 2,450 percent since shortly after Trump's inauguration. About 53 percent of detainees are now civil immigration violators with no criminal convictions or pending criminal cases. This is the result of an increase in aggressive tactics such as workplace raids, street patrols, and re-arrests for immigration court appearances.
Detention facilities themselves have also expanded rapidly. The number of facilities operated by ICE grew by 91 percent in 2025 alone, with 104 new locations added. They range in type from small county jails to closed state prisons that can hold more than 2,000 people to a 5,000-person tent facility at Fort Bliss military base in Texas. The ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’ allocated $45 billion for detention facility expansion alone, and ICE's overall budget will exceed $100 billion by 2029, making it the largest federal law enforcement agency in the country. The government has set a goal of reaching 100,000 detainees per day.
Deportation numbers have risen quickly. On its first anniversary, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that it had deported about 675,000 people, adding to the nearly 2 million people who left the country voluntarily, for a total of more than 2.5 million people, according to the government. However, an independent analysis by Syracuse University's TRAC Institute found that the official number of removals based on ICE data is about 290,603, less than half of the DHS figure. This disparity stems from how we define ‘deportation. A key issue is whether to include voluntary departures as deportations. Regardless of which number you choose, it's hard to deny that deportations are up significantly from the same period under the previous administration.
Number of waiting rooms: Stuck
“Justice delayed is justice denied. - William Gladstone”
The most noticeable deterioration in this 14-month period is the legal immigration backlog. USCIS has a backlog of nearly 11.3 million cases, the highest level in at least a decade. As of the second quarter of FY 2025, USCIS processed 2.7 million cases, down 18 percent from 3.3 million in the same period a year earlier. The backlog is structurally building as the number of cases received exceeds the number processed each quarter. There are even reports of over 34,000 applications that have not been opened.
The situation is no different in immigration court. According to TRAC Institute data, there were 3,377,998 active cases pending in immigration court as of the end of December 2025. Of these, about 2.33 million are cases where someone has already filed an asylum application and is awaiting a hearing or decision. The national average wait time is about 900 days, or nearly two and a half years. There were about 570 immigration judges as of January 2026, up slightly from 540 at the beginning of 2024, but that's not nearly enough to handle the backlog of nearly 3.37 million cases.
There's more than one reason for the backlog. First, federal workforce reductions led by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) resulted in the layoff of USCIS probationary employees. USCIS was targeted for cuts even though it is a self-funded agency that operates on application fees. The introduction of enhanced anti-fraud screening and additional security review procedures has increased processing time per case. The suspension of permanent residency processing for refugees and asylum seekers due to additional screening also played a role.
From January to September 2025, median processing times reported by USCIS increased by an average of 13 percent, and green card renewal (I-90) processing times jumped a whopping 938 percent, from less than a month to more than eight months. This was coupled with the State Department's indefinite suspension of immigrant visas for nationals of 75 countries, effective January 21, 2026. The rationale was to reassess public charge risks, but one of the main avenues of legal immigration was closed. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) dramatically revised its net immigration projections downward to 410,000 in 2025 and 570,000 in 2026, 2.9 million fewer than previous estimates.
Numbers in the Workplace: Empties
“No seed can sprout in a field without laborers. - American Farm Bureau Federation”
The impact of the numbers extends beyond borders and courts and into the workplace. In its February 2026 Annual Review of the United States, the International Monetary Fund projected that increased immigration enforcement and deportations would reduce the size of the foreign-born labor force, slowing employment growth and reducing economic activity by about 0.4 percent by 2027. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas painted a darker picture: depending on the scale of internal deportations, GDP growth in 2027 could be between 0.49 and 1.49 percentage points lower than the baseline, depending on the scale of deportations. It's worth noting that in the Dallas Fed analysis, 93 percent of the GDP decline comes from reduced border flows, not deportations, meaning that closing the border itself is imposing the greatest cost on the economy.
The pain in the industry is already visible. As of 2024, an estimated 2.4 million jobs will be vacant in the U.S. agriculture sector, with 56 percent of farmers reporting labor shortages. With foreign-born workers making up 68 percent of the agricultural workforce, reduced immigration will soon translate into unharvested crops and higher price tags at the dinner table. We've already seen the cost of agricultural labor spike 17 percent in 2023 due to the labor shortage. The story is similar in construction and hospitality, with labor gaps spreading across industries that rely on immigrant labor. The healthcare sector is no different, with the American Medical Association (AAMC) predicting a shortage of up to 86,000 physicians by 2036, and declining immigration is contributing to the gap.
It's also worth noting an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The CBO has estimated that increased immigration would boost total nominal GDP by $8.9 trillion between 2024 and 2034 and reduce the federal deficit by $900 billion over the same period. The flip side of this estimate is that reduced immigration could lead to lower tax revenues and higher fiscal burdens, as payroll and income taxes on immigrants' wage income are a major source of tax revenue. The foreign-born population, which has fallen to 51.9 million, the first decline since the 1960s, is both a result of enforcement and a reflection of a contraction in legal immigration. With visa processing delays and narrowing immigration pathways, high-skilled workers and investors looking to come to the U.S. are beginning to weigh their options.
Closing remarks
If we put 14 months of numbers on a scale, on one side weighs the weight of border control: a 92 percent reduction in illegal menstruation and eight consecutive months without release. On the other side weighs 73,000 detentions, 11.3 million outstanding cases, 3.37 million court backlogs, and a projected 0.4 percent decline in GDP. Which side is heavier is inevitably in the eye of the beholder.
But one thing is clear to the Korean American community. Over the past 14 months, wait times for those in the legal process have gotten noticeably longer. With green card renewal processing slowed by more than eight times, immigrant visas from 75 countries suspended indefinitely, and USCIS backlogs at an all-time high, the reality is that even legal immigrants unrelated to illegal immigration are being directly impacted. For those waiting in line, the news that “the line will be longer” is never taken lightly: a month's delay in visa renewal means canceled business trips, a half-year delay in green card processing means another delay in reuniting families. Behind every number there is always a person waiting, and the weight of that wait is not captured in statistics.
If you're in the process of legal immigration right now, it's more important than ever to check the expiration dates on your documents, keep all your filings and receipts, and regularly check the status of your case through the USCIS online system. It's a safe bet to start your application at least six months before it expires, especially for documents with expiration dates like green card renewals or work authorization extensions. The scales are still tipping, and it's anyone's guess what the numbers will be in the next 14 months.
Disclaimer: This column is for general information purposes only and is not legal advice for your specific case. You should always consult with an attorney who specializes in immigration law for your individual case.
Law Offices of Jin Dong Cho
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