Policy Tracker

Illegal entry across the southern border has dropped to its lowest level in over 50 years. CBP recorded 12,730 encounters at the southwest border in July 2026, and 115,762 across the first ten months of the year. The peak was December 2023, when the same measure recorded 301,981 encounters in a single month, of which 249,740 were Border Patrol apprehensions between ports of entry. Border Patrol released zero illegal immigrants into the country every month from May 2025 onward, a streak that reached 14 consecutive months in June 2026. Known got-aways, the people detected crossing but not caught, ran above 2K a day at the 2023 peak and now run under 50 a day nationwide.

For the first time since the 2021 border surge began, most new illegal presence comes from visa overstays rather than illegal border crossings.

Since January 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested 178,639 illegal immigrants who already held a criminal conviction. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reports there have been more than 605K deportations in that same period, not to include another 1.9 million self-deportations. Roughly 55K of those convictions were violent: 43K for assault, 5,400 for sexual assault, 2,700 for robbery and 2,100 for homicide. Another 90K were serious non-violent, including 30K for DUI, 22,600 for drug offenses and 6,100 for weapons charges. More than 7K gang members were taken in, among them MS-13 and Tren de Aragua members, along with 1,538 known or suspected terrorists, 1,534 of whom have since been removed.

About 435K illegal immigrants with criminal convictions are still on the ICE non-detained docket, including roughly 15K tied to homicide, 20K to sexual assault and 105K to assault.

ICE reported 356,389 removals in 2026 as of July 21, 2026, with two and a half months of the year still to run. The record for a single year is 438,421, set in 2013.

The Trump Administration has reduced overall legal immigration, focusing on the Diversity Visa, refugee admissions, and H-1B visas. Green Cards have gone down 12% to 18%, from ~1.35 million in 2024 to an estimated 1.08 to 1.16 million in 2026. H-1B approvals are down 52%, from 399,402 in 2024, to 328,185 in 2025, and to ~191K (projected) for 2026. Continuing-employment approvals were 291,542 in 2025; they cover extensions, employer changes, and amendments for workers usually already in the U.S., not new arrivals or departures. The Diversity Immigrant Visa lottery is at zero, with none issued since 23 December 2025. Refugee admissions are down 87%, from 100,034 in 2024 to 12,904 in the first eleven months of 2026. Temporary admissions are down 7.8% over the same period, from 8.2 million in 2024 to 7.6 million in 2025. That is the smallest fall of the four, and a student or a visiting worker who leaves when the visa expires is a different question from permanent settlement.

Recommendation: Congress should pass a new law that replaces the 1990 Immigration Act. The law would lower the annual cap to about 200K, in line with the 1924-to-1965 average, eliminate the Diversity Visa lottery, and narrow family-based Green Cards to spouses and minor children. Legislation is the only thing that turns a one-administration win into a reduction that lasts, as the 1924 Act did for 41 years.

The H-1B visa is a temporary visa given to foreign workers in what the law calls a specialty occupation, meaning any job that requires a bachelor's degree. A worker is tied to a sponsoring employer, and once the visa status expires, it has to be renewed or it is revoked.

The Trump administration has imposed a $100K fee on each new H-1B petition (imposed by executive order in September 2025) and a wage-weighted lottery. The $100K fee has been voided by a Federal Judge as of June 2026 but the lottery has been in effect since February 2026.

The State Department says Presidential Proclamation 10998 currently suspends or limits entry and visa issuance for nationals of 39 countries, as well as individuals applying using travel documents issued or endorsed by the Palestinian Authority. Applicants subject to the proclamation may still submit visa applications and attend scheduled interviews, but may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission. The separate January 2026 pause on immigrant-visa issuance for nationals of 75 countries ended on August 21, 2026, pursuant to a court order.

Recommendation: The current proclamation is built almost entirely on executive authority. Section 212(f) is a presidential discretion, and the public-charge freeze is a State Department interpretation; a future administration could lift either on its first day. The durable step is to write the country-level distribution into law, alongside a replacement for the 1990 Immigration Act that lowers the annual cap to roughly 200K and eliminates the Diversity Visa lottery. The 1924 Immigration Act set both its country distribution and its volume by law, and it held across both parties for 41 years; an executive proclamation lasts only until the next administration reverses it.

This section is harder to measure because there is no fixed target number - the goal is straightforward: if immigration fraud is found, it leads to arrests and/or denaturalization.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has completed more than 19.3K fraud investigations with a 65% fraud confirmation rate and has made more than 29K referrals to its Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate. Operation Twin Shield examined 1K+ cases in Minneapolis-St. Paul, finding fraud or security concerns in 44% of interviews. USCIS reports more than 6.5K site visits and more than 19.5K social-media checks as part of its fraud, compliance, and security work.

Denaturalization has now accelerated sharply. The federal government historically filed fewer than one civil denaturalization suit a month (average of 0.6/month). TRAC identified at least 105 civil denaturalization suits during the first seven months of 2026, including 50 filed in July. TRAC reports that 8 civil denaturalization suits were filed in all of 2025. USCIS field offices have been directed to supply 100 to 200 cases a month. Operation Janus is the government program that hunts for people who became citizens despite having been ordered deported under a different name. It began in 2008 after a border officer found 206 immigrants who had final deportation orders but had reused new identities to win Green Cards and citizenship. USCIS later discovered roughly 315K naturalization files where the fingerprints were never digitized or did not match - meaning the criminal-background check behind those citizenships was never verified. That backlog is the pool Janus is now working through. The DOJ issued a June 2025 memo directing attorneys to "maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings," but the legal process is slow: stripping citizenship requires the government to win a separate federal lawsuit for each person.

Documented fraud patterns include: Feeding Our Future ($350M+, 65 convicted of 79 charged, founder Aimee Bock sentenced to 41 years 8 months), Chinese marriage fraud rings (11 charged in Navy sham marriage scheme), Indian H-1B visa fraud (Infosys $34M settlement), and Cuban asylum fraud ($18M smuggling ring, 12 indicted) (see broader list below).

Foreign citizens and foreign governments own about 45.8 million acres of American farmland - roughly 3.4% of all privately-owned farmland in the country. They also buy an average of about 100K existing U.S. homes a year, worth around $56 billion, based on the 2020-2024 average tracked by the National Association of Realtors.

The 100K buyers split into two groups, both of them non-citizens. A little over half live in the United States - recent immigrants who have been here less than two years, or people on temporary visas such as H-1B work visas and student visas. These buyers mostly purchase a single-family house in the suburbs to live in. The rest live abroad and never move here. They buy U.S. homes as vacation properties or rental investments, and most pay all cash. Neither group has to be a citizen, and the federal government sets no requirement that a buyer hold a Green Card or live in the country.

Washington does nothing to stop any of it. The only federal law on foreign farmland, passed in 1978, just requires foreign owners to report what they own - it bans no purchase. Twenty-eight states have written their own restrictions, most aimed at China and other hostile governments.

Recommendation: Lawful permanent resident status (Green Card) should be the minimum to purchase any U.S. real estate. Foreign-state entities and sovereign wealth funds should be barred entirely. Existing foreign-owned property should be divested within one year of legislative enactment. A separate Center article will cover the full mechanism and constitutional questions.