image copyrightGetty Images
Immigration has always been a central issue in Donald Trump's message.
When he descended the golden escalator of Trump Tower in 2015 to announce his candidacy that would lead to his first presidential term, he accused Mexico of sending drugs and crime to the United States, and it has been a constant slogan ever since.
During his first term, some of his ambitions to stem the flow of would-be immigrants were limited by the courts.
However, restrictions have been fewer in the latter thanks to a more permissive Supreme Court and tens of billions of additional dollars allocated to enforcement by Congress.
The question of who should be allowed to live in the United States remains a major issue worrying voters in the upcoming Nov. 3 midterm elections, which are largely seen as a referendum on Trump's presidency.
In his successful 2024 campaign, Trump promised border closures and mass deportations, and few can deny that he has kept both promises.
But even among those who voted for a tougher policy, there are concerns that the crackdown has gone too far.
His emblematic policy has manifested itself in five key ways that the graphs clearly reflect.
End of Most read
1. A closed border
All the news you need is on BBC World Service
Download it here
End of Ad app
Border crossings skyrocketed during Joe Biden's presidency, with more than 4.5 million encounters with migrants at the southern border between 2023 and 2024 alone, reflecting the huge number of people heading to Mexico's border with the United States.
His administration ended up significantly reducing the monthly numbers by restricting asylum applications and expelling migrants who entered the United States illegally without being processed for entry.
When Trump returned to the presidency, that flow of migrants was drastically reduced. Encounters at the border collapsed.
By the end of the first year of Trump's second term, the chaotic scenes that had made headlines around the world during the Biden administration had largely disappeared.
For example, on a trip to the border city of El Paso, Texas, in November 2025, the BBC found quiet streets where there had previously been makeshift camps with thousands of migrants who had been granted temporary and conditional permission to wait inside the United States for immigration procedures.
To achieve what he often describes as the “most secure” border in American history, the Trump administration took an aggressive, multifaceted approach.
This includes effectively freezing asylum claims at the border, ending the practice of "stop and release" migrants in the United States, deploying troops to the border and putting pressure on Mexico to stem the flow of people heading north.
"President Trump promised the American people a secure border, and the data shows he kept his promise," Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a statement on Oct. 16.
"The results couldn't be clearer: rigorous law enforcement works."
2. Wall construction accelerates
Building a "big, beautiful wall" along the more than 2,000 miles of the US-Mexico border was one of Trump's signature campaign promises in 2016.
Progress in this regard has accelerated during his second term, driven by $46.5 billion in new funds obtained after the approval of the law that Trump dubbed the "Big Beautiful Bill."
According to government figures, before Trump returned to the White House there were approximately 1,036 km of "main wall" - the closest to the border - in addition to 120 km of "secondary" wall located a little further inside the United States.
Since then, a further 402 km of new wall has been completed, with primary, secondary and water barriers, and technological means have been added to detect illegal crossings. Currently, there are an additional 2,322 km of barriers under construction.
However, experts offer a more complex view of what has actually been built, rather than what has simply been improved or updated.
Additionally, the impact the wall is having on overall immigration numbers is up for debate.
"Since construction of the new wall began in earnest, there has been no significant change in the number of people crossing the border," said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an immigration enforcement expert at the American Immigration Council, a Washington-based nonprofit.
According to him, there is no indication that the border wall has reduced migrant crossings. The reduction is rather due to Trump's policies and message.
For his part, the president continues to present the wall as a successful policy and continues to claim that Mexico paid for it.
"I'm the king of the wall," he said at a rally in Kentucky on October 17. "By the way, Mexico did pay for that wall. I charged them tariffs and costs like they had never paid before in history."
3. Arrests and deportations skyrocket
It has been within the United States that has generated most of the headlines for Trump's immigration policies. Within the country, the operations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) agents to detain people accused of being in the country illegally have shaken cities throughout the national territory.
During his campaign, Trump promised the immediate start of what he described as "the largest deportation operation in American history," which officials said would begin with people who had committed crimes.
Arrests and subsequent detentions at immigration centers have increased significantly since Trump returned to office, with a record high of nearly 50,000 in July of this year alone, according to data obtained by the Deportation Data Project, a repository of US immigration data run by the University of California.
But the same data shows that a large portion of arrests involve people with no criminal record. In July 2026, arrests of immigrants with criminal records reached an all-time low of 27%.
Deportations have also increased significantly. As of mid-July of this year, ICE was removing an average of 1,255 people from the country per day, compared to about 770 in the final months of Biden's term, although deportations increased dramatically in the Democrat's final year in office.
However, the tactics employed by ICE have raised concerns among many Americans, including many who supported tougher restrictions overall.
This became increasingly evident following Operation Metro Surge, a large-scale two-month police operation in Minneapolis in early 2026 that left two American citizens dead.
A poll by The New York Times and Siena, published on October 21, revealed that 50% of voters trust Democrats to handle the issue, compared to 46% who trust Republicans, even though the immigration issue has traditionally been a strong point for Republicans.
Another survey conducted by the news portal Politico and the consulting firm Public First at the end of September revealed deep divisions among Republicans: 31% of Republicans who are not followers of MAGA, that is, those who are not aligned with the Trump movement, believe that the anti-immigration campaign is too aggressive.
4. The reception of refugees decreases drastically
Upon his return to the White House last year, Trump almost immediately suspended refugee admissions. He said then that it would only be resumed if it was shown to be in the interests of the United States.
However, in February he signed an executive order that narrowly reopened that process for Afrikaners (a South African ethnic group made up primarily of descendants of white European settlers), who the White House says are being killed and "persecuted." The Pretoria government emphatically denies this.
The refugee admission ceiling for fiscal year 2026 was initially set at 7,500, which was raised to 17,500 in May this year due to what the government described as an "unforeseen refugee-related emergency situation."
Overall, refugee admissions were significantly reduced. State Department data shows that 16,292 refugees were admitted to the United States during fiscal year 2026, of which 16,287 were South Africans.
In comparison, in the last two fiscal years of the Biden administration (2023 and 2024), 60,000 and 100,000 people entered the country, respectively. In fiscal year 2024, the highest numbers came from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Syria and Venezuela.
Hundreds of thousands of people protected from deportation lost that protection when, during Trump's second term, Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was also eliminated.
This humanitarian program gave eligible individuals the right to live and work in the United States if it was deemed unsafe to return to their home countries.
One of those countries was Haiti. In June, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's decision to end TPS for some 350,000 Haitians in the United States.
5. Visas are restricted
Other legal avenues for coming to live and work in the United States have also been tightened.
Nationals of dozens of countries that the Trump administration has deemed a security risk have been subject to full or partial visa freezes and travel restrictions.
Stricter controls and new rules requiring people residing in the United States to return to their home countries to apply for permanent residency have slowed that process.
In September 2025, the imposition of a US$100,000 fee for new H1-B visas for skilled workers, mostly Indian citizens, shocked the US technology sector.
In May of this year, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services announced in X that enrollment for 2027 had decreased by 40%.
"The data is a clear sign that the days of overusing the program with mass enrollment of low-wage workers are over, and that the program is better serving its original purpose of attracting highly skilled foreign workers and protecting the wages, working conditions, and employment opportunities of American workers," the statement added.
While a court has blocked the $100,000 fee—for now—the threat of it appears to have deterred employers. However, some experts warn that the government's goal of protecting American jobs, raising wages and preventing outsourcing could prove elusive.
A study by the Wharton School, the business school at the University of Pennsylvania, concluded that changes to the H1-B program would have "no significant impact" on the wages of US workers, as any reduction in competition would be offset by lower productivity.
However, other routes have been opened to reach the United States for those who have US$1 million to spare.
The "Trump Gold Card", launched in 2025, sought to attract wealthy foreigners to come to live in the US in exchange for a "gift" of US$1 million to the US government, plus a non-refundable application fee of US$15,000.
At the time, Trump claimed that the program would boost the US economy. However, its reception seems to have been minimal until now. As of April, only one applicant had been accepted.
This article was originally written in English and we used an artificial intelligence tool to translate it. A BBC journalist reviewed the text before publication. Learn more about how we use AI.
Discover more
Video
End of Video
