Monthly Immigration Update: August 2025

The United States is experiencing a drop in foreign tourism, declining foreign college student enrollment, and a reduction in the number of foreign-born workers in the labor force. At least at the moment, the enforcement policies have had a chilling effect on legal migration.

It’s unclear just how much damage these reductions will cause in the aggregate, but some industries and communities are already feeling pain. American communities and American workers suffer when we do not have immigration policies designed to promote U.S. economic growth.

The enforcement policies have achieved many of the Trump Administration’s goals, especially with regard to the border. But enforcement without concurrent openness to immigrant contributions is destined to leave us poorer. I’m hopeful that these current lower numbers can serve as the warning we need to look ahead and build an immigration policy that welcomes immigration and ensures our future prosperity, vitality, and security.

Figure of the Month

55 million 

Associated Press reports that the current administration is reviewing all 55 million visa holders for potential immigration ineligibility.

Data Dive

• Around 120,000 Ukrainians on humanitarian parole may lose their legal protection to remain in the United States if the Trump Administration lets Uniting for Ukraine, which welcomed Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion, lapse this month.

• Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) launched a massive recruitment campaign to hire 10,000 new agents to meet President Trump’s goal of deporting 1 million immigrants per year, NBC News reports. The agency has lowered the minimum age requirement to 18 years old and and is offering new recruits up to $50,000 in signing bonuses, $60,000 in student loan repayments, as well as retirement benefits.

• A Stateline analysis shows that only 40% of ICE arrests this year involved individuals with criminal convictions – down from 53% during the same period in 2024. Meanwhile, arrests of people with no convictions nearly tripled, rising to 60% of total ICE arrests.

• Mass deportation continues to be antigrowth economic policy: The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimates that removing 10% of the nation’s undocumented immigrants each year would increase the federal deficit by $350 billion and shrink GDP by 1% within just four years. Over 10 years, the cost to the federal government would rise to $987 billion, GDP would decrease by 3.3%, and wages would fall by 1.7%.
• Reuters reports the Trump Administration will have a refugee ceiling of 40,000 for the next fiscal year, with most of the slots designated for White South Africans. This is a significant drop from the prior administration, which admitted over 100,000 refugees in fiscal year 2024.

What I’m Reading

• The BBC reports on Battle Buddies, a group of U.S. military veterans who have begun accompanying Afghan asylum seekers to their immigration court dates. Battle Buddies was founded by AfghanEvac founder Shawn VanDiver after Sayed Naser, an Afghan who says he worked for the U.S. military, was detained when he appeared for his mandatory immigration court hearing related to his asylum request.

• In Foreign Affairs, Alexander Kustov, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, makes the case for targeted immigration policies that “help voters recognize immigration’s benefits to their country.”

• The 1% remittance tax passed by Congress seems small. But to foreign born workers supporting their families with their American wages, it could be significant.

• The Niskanen Center’s Owen Tritt has an important piece about the riskiness of reassigning other federal law enforcement officers to immigration enforcement. At least 6,700 federal employees across the FBI, the IRS, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and other agencies have been reassigned to support deportation efforts.

• José R. Ralat, Texas Monthly’s taco editor, spoke with taqueria owners about how ICE raids are impacting their businesses, with steep declines in sales, empty dining rooms, and a general anxiety pervading their communities.
• The Barbed Wire writes about the nearly 1 million K-12 students in Texas with at least one undocumented parent and the widespread fear of immigration enforcement near schools.

Bush Institute Insights

• In a recent episode of The Strategerist podcast, host Andrew Kaufmann and Global Policy Director Natalie Gonnella-Platts sat down with Shawn VanDiver, founder and President of the Afghan Evac coalition, to discuss the relocation and resettlement of Afghan allies, the expiration of temporary protected status (TPS), and why all Americans should care about Afghanistan.