Legal Immigration From Muslim-Majority Nations Drops 96% as Supreme Court Lets Third-Country Deportations Resume

The Numbers

Legal immigration from Muslim-majority countries has collapsed under the Trump administration, according to a White House social media post citing analysis from the Cato Institute. The data shows monthly inflows from nations like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Malaysia falling from roughly 14,000 people a month in 2024 to about 1,000 by February 2026, a drop of roughly 96 percent, according to Breitbart and Truthout, both of which cited the same White House post and Cato graph.

The decline actually started in late 2024, before Trump took office, according to WFMD, which noted the graph shows monthly admissions above 22,000 between July and October 2024 before beginning a downward slide. The steepest drop came after January 2025.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin attributed the decline to "tougher vetting" of "high-risk countries," according to Truthout, without detailing what specific risk factors are being screened for. Monthly inflow levels are largely set by Congress, per Breitbart, and include new legal migrants, chain-migration relatives and refugee admissions the White House controls directly.

The Cato Contradiction

Cato Institute director of immigration studies David Bier produced the original analysis, and he is not a fan of what the administration did with it. "Thanks for citing my work. You are violating the law and harming Americans while making the country less safe, less free, and less prosperous," Bier posted in response to the White House, according to WFMD.

But WFMD also flagged an important legal fact missing from Bier's claim: no court has actually ruled that the administration's Muslim-majority country restrictions are illegal, though challenges are pending in district courts. Cato itself is a libertarian think tank that generally favors expanded immigration, which makes the White House borrowing its data to celebrate a crackdown an odd pairing.

Antisemitism Framing and Pushback

Noah Pollak, a senior adviser at the Treasury Department's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, called the policy "the single most consequential policy to combat antisemitism in the U.S. in the last decade," crediting White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, according to both Breitbart and Truthout.

Truthout pushed back hard on that framing, calling it "a false, hateful trope that Muslim people drive hatred against Jewish people" and describing the broader policy as "openly Islamophobic." That is Truthout's characterization, not an established fact, and it deserves to be stated plainly as a contested claim rather than adjudicated here. What is verifiable is that Trump's first term began with a travel ban targeting majority-Muslim countries that was challenged in court, and that his administration has since moved to further restrict visas from a larger list of nations.

Republican lawmakers celebrated the numbers without reservation. "Absolutely incredible victory for the American people, thanks to @POTUS," said Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas). Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) added, "4 percent to go! Thank you, President Trump," according to both Truthout and WFMD.

The Supreme Court's Third-Country Ruling

Separately, the Supreme Court ruled to let the administration resume deporting migrants to countries other than their own, without giving them a chance to show the harm they might face there, according to the Guardian. The court halted a ruling from Boston-based U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy that had found the policy unlawful, and agreed to hear full arguments on the underlying case in December. The court's three liberal justices dissented.

Federal attorneys told the court that Murphy's ruling had forced cancellation of a deportation flight carrying about 70 people bound for three countries, the Guardian reported. More than 25,000 people have been deported to 29 countries under the policy since it began, according to a tally by human rights groups cited by the Guardian, with most going to Mexico. Others have gone to South Sudan, a country the State Department warns Americans to avoid due to crime, kidnapping and armed conflict risk, along with Uganda, Equatorial Guinea, Liberia and the Central African Republic.

A $410 Million Operation

The deportation network behind those flights has a price tag. The Washington Post reported that the administration has authorized or pledged at least $410 million to secure third-country deportation deals with 31 countries, mostly in Africa and Latin America, as of the end of June. That includes $81 million in direct payments to 13 foreign governments, funneled through a new State Department unit called the Office of Remigration, run by career diplomat Christian Ehrhardt and operating under the direction of Stephen Miller, according to internal government records the Post reviewed.

That is taxpayer money being used to pay foreign governments, several with documented instability, to take in people who are not their citizens. Whatever one thinks of the deportation policy itself, the scale of the spending and the lack of prior public reporting on it are facts worth tracking regardless of political lean.

The Legal Aid Squeeze

The enforcement push has also hit the legal aid infrastructure that represents migrants. Mother Jones reported that the administration cut off more than $200 million in federal funding for legal defense of migrant children, forcing groups like the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project into layoffs even as caseloads grew. The outlet detailed one Labor Day weekend incident in which attorney Cooper Richardson raced to stop the deportation of a Guatemalan child client before a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order.

What's Unresolved

The Supreme Court's December arguments will determine whether third-country deportations without a harm hearing are constitutional, a question that remains genuinely open. Also unresolved is whether the pending district court challenges to the Muslim-majority country restrictions will succeed, since no ruling has yet found those specific policies unlawful. Both fights will shape whether the current numbers hold or reverse.