The Patriot Post® · 'Negative Net Migration for the First Time in 50 Years'

President Donald Trump is known for making many bold claims about his success in the White House.

Back in August, for example, the president posted an image on Truth Social of a Border Patrol agent looking through binoculars and a caption that read, “Promises Made. Promises Kept. Negative Net Migration for the First Time in 50 years.”

Leftist naysayers assumed Trump was making another ridiculous boast merely for attention. But even they couldn’t deny the truth that the president had indeed backed up his promise to tackle illegal immigration.

At the time, even CNN’s chief data analyst, Harry Enten, enthusiastically reported the fact that net migration dropped by nearly three million in 2025, down 60%. He declared, “The Donald Trump administration is arguably the most influential this century and probably, as well, dating back a good portion of the last century.”

Winning big was just too much for some in the Leftmedia to swallow.

The so-called fact-checkers at PolitiFact swooped in quickly and determined that Trump’s statement was “mostly false.” They bent over backwards to make sure their readers knew Trump didn’t know what he was talking about.

PolitiFact concluded, “What ‘may be’ is a prediction. That’s different from what is. We checked the data. The available numbers are 2025 projections, not final numbers.” That was PolitiFact’s way of saying, Take that, Trump! You’re wrong again.

They went on to claim, “Multiple projections say 2025 net migration is likely to show a notable decline. But there are no current numbers showing the U.S. has reached negative net migration in 2025, as Trump’s statement reads. The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.”

As it turns out, while Trump may have jumped the gun, he was right: The administration has effectively reversed the tide of illegal immigration to its lowest point in more than 50 years. As The Washington Post writes, “Net migration to the U.S. was between negative 10,000 and negative 295,000 in 2025, according to an update of estimates first released in the summer by economists Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson, of center-left think tank Brookings, and Stan Veuger, of the conservative American Enterprise Institute.”

The Post adds, “While arrests and deportations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have been in the spotlight, the report’s authors attribute the majority of the drop-off in immigration to a slowdown in new arrivals orchestrated by President Donald Trump’s administration — from the near-closure of the U.S.-Mexico border to new visa restrictions and fees and the end of many humanitarian migrant programs, including for nearly all refugees.”

It’s surprising to see the media report something positive about the Trump administration, but, after all, it’s hard to argue with or twist factual data backing up his claims. Nonetheless, Brookings tried to portray success as a failure by pointing out that the total number of deportations hasn’t yet reached the 600,000 mark claimed by the Department of Homeland Security.

Joel Abbott at Not the Bee responded, “If true, that is devastating. It means, despite media hype from the White House, actual forcible deportations are not happening anywhere NEAR where they need to be, though self-deportations certainly skyrocketed. Brookings agrees, however, that deportations are likely to increase en masse with the additional funding given to ICE and U.S. Border Patrol under last year’s Big Beautiful Bill.”

Keeping track of the precise number of deportations isn’t an easy task, but instead of focusing on the minutiae of immigration, the media should be more willing to accept and report the broader reality that the Trump administration has made historic progress in curtailing illegal and legal immigration.

As Abbott adds, “Perhaps the biggest question is not what the exact deportation numbers will be in 2026, but why every other president for the last 50 years allowed mass migration into the United States, even when the American people explicitly pushed Congress to pass laws to protect the border.”

Brookings, no supporter of the president or immigration enforcement, admits, “The first year of the second Trump administration has seen dramatic changes in immigration policy, resulting in a sharp slowdown in net migration to the United States. We expect the pattern of restrictive policy and increased enforcement to continue or intensify through the coming year.”

Some economists who oppose immigration controls have long warned of the threat to wages, consumer prices, and the job market posed by reducing immigration. But the Trump economy is thriving right now despite the most significant reduction in immigration in decades.

Now, the president is broadening the focus on immigration by getting serious about legal immigration as well. The White House plans to increase biometric and surveillance measures, making it more cumbersome and expensive to obtain a visa and banning immigrants from 75 countries who might be a financial burden.

All in all, the fact that President Trump’s historic immigration reduction is not quite as high as he promised is actually a clear indicator of its success.