A new immigration report describes the Biden-era surge of foreign-born migrants into the country as “extraordinary” and a “truly national issue” for the foreseeable future.
The Center for Immigration Studies released a data analysis of immigration over the previous four-plus decades. Based on CIS’s numbers, the U.S. foreign-born population rose by 8.3 million under Biden, with 5.4 million of those being illegal migrants.
At the start of 2025, the legal and illegal immigrant population hit a record high, both numerically and as a share of the total U.S. population.
In analyzing the data, CIS found the foreign-born share of the population hit record highs in 14 states. The influx also pushed 31 states and the District of Columbia into new population highs, The Washington Examiner reported.
As Biden turned a blind eye to the crisis, California experienced a wave of 1.4 million migrants, while Texas added 1 million.
Other key findings:
- The foreign-born share of the population hit historic highs in 14 states: Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
- From 1980 to 2025, the foreign-born population in the South region grew an astonishing 578%. The foreign-born population since 1980 grew 258% in the West, 199% in the Midwest and 141% in the Northeast.
- In 1980, only three states had more than one million immigrants. By 2025 there were 14 states with over one million foreign-born residents: California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Georgia, Massachusetts, Washington, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Virginia.
- Nationally, the foreign-born population grew eight times faster than the U.S.-born population, but in 17 states the foreign-born population grew 20 times faster than the U.S.-born population from 1980 to 2025.
- The border surge contributed to significant increases in the number of immigrants in the last four years in many states. From the first quarter of 2021 to the first quarter of 2025, the foreign-born population grew by more than one-third in 16 states.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, along with Border Czar Tom Homan, has been tasked with tracking down and deporting these foreign nationals, starting with criminals and national security threats.
Since Trump returned to office on Jan. 20, the Trump administration has arrested nearly 300,000 illegal aliens and deported more than 239,000, according to DHS.
But their efforts are stalled or hijacked at every turn by Democrats, leftist judges and paid protestors.
“In the face of historic opposition from activist, liberal judges, President Trump is committed to carrying out the largest mass deportation operation in history to remove the millions of unvetted, illegal, criminal aliens that Joe Biden welcomed into our country,” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, told The Daily Signal.
Legacy media outlets also sway public opinion with slanted and sympathetic coverage of illegal criminals, immigrants who have overstayed their visas and deportees who have returned multiple times after being removed.
Despite skyrocketing attacks on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, deportations have led to a decline in violent crime nationally.
Roughly 70% of ICE arrests are of charged criminals, and homicides fell 17% in 30 U.S. cities in the first half of 2025, The Daily Signal reported.
“70% of people we’re arresting are criminals. … Who are the other 30%? The other 30% are national security threats, like [the arrests of] over 300 Iranian nationals,” Homan said. “These are people who are national security threats based on intelligence, based on other information; these are people we have to take off the street, that we have to deport.”
According to census data, migration trends have shifted from the East to the South, which has seen a 578% increase in the foreign-born population, The Examiner reported.
California has always been a preferred destination due to its proximity to the border and progressive politicians who protect illegal immigrants. California is home to 10.6 million immigrants—22% of the foreign-born population nationwide—and the highest of any state, according to Public Policy Institute of California.
In Los Angeles County, a third of its 10 million residents are foreign-born, or an estimated 3.6 million immigrants. ICE has faced ongoing resistance, with violent rioters attacking agents and vehicles, during recent raids in the LA metro area.
Meanwhile, Texas struggled to handle the immigrants that flooded its border under Biden. Gov. Greg Abbott started busing illegal immigrants to sanctuary cities to combat the influx of migrants and highlight the Biden’s administration border disaster.
In early 2024, The Texas Tribune reported that Texas had spent more than $148 million busing migrants to other parts of the country. These cities included New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Denver.
The CIS think tank said the foreign-born population surge has been “extraordinary.” It happened over decades, creating dramatic population and demographic changes in the south.
“The South now has the largest immigrant population. The increase has been extraordinary,” said the report, which focused on where Biden-era border crossers ended up.
CIS’s report revealed other states with numerically large increases from 2021 to 2025: Florida, up 828,000; Pennsylvania, up 433,000; Georgia, up 413,000; Maryland, up 396,000; Indiana, up 339,000; Massachusetts, up 327,000; and Washington, up 311,000.
“Our analysis of the size of the growth of the foreign-born population across the country shows that it has become a truly national issue in a way that was not the case four and a half decades ago,” the report concluded. “This is likely to be true for the foreseeable future.”
