US city population growth slows as immigration fell under Trump

Population growth in U.S. cities has slowed and some of the steepest drops are in communities along the southern border as immigration fell during the opening months of President Donald Trump’s second term, according to new Census Bureau estimates.

The bureau said the average growth rate for metro areas fell to 0.6% in 2025 from 1.1% a year earlier, reflecting a broad slowdown in international migration after immigrants had helped fuel urban rebounds in 2024, the last year of President Joe Biden’s open border policies.

“That pattern suggests a sharper rise-and-fall effect in border regions, where international migration plays a more central role in year-to-year population change,” Texas Demographic Center interim director Helen You told The Associated Press.

Metro areas along the U.S.-Mexico border saw the steepest declines as the number of immigrants fell, including in Laredo, Texas; Yuma, Arizona; and El Centro, California. Big immigration hubs also saw significant drops. Miami-Dade County, Harris County in Texas and Los Angeles County all took in far fewer immigrants last year.

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Laredo, Texas, saw its growth rate tumble from 3.2% to 0.2%. Yuma, Arizona, dropped from 3.3% to 1.4%, while El Centro, California, fell from 1.2% growth into a 0.7% decline.

The slowdown extended beyond the border. Major immigrant destinations, including Miami-Dade County, Harris County, Texas, and Los Angeles County, all recorded much lower levels of immigration in 2025. The Census Bureau said nine out of 10 U.S. counties took in fewer immigrants than a year earlier.

The Census Bureau data covers a one-year period ending in July 2025.

Demographers said the change mattered because immigration has become a key driver of population growth in an aging country with low birth rates. In many large metro areas, it now plays an outsized role in determining whether populations rise or fall.

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“After four years in which millions and millions of illegal aliens poured across our borders totally unfettered and unchecked, we now have the strongest and most secure border in American history, by far,” Trump hailed in his State of the Union Address. 

“In the past nine months, zero illegal aliens have been admitted to the United States. But we will always allow people to come in legally, people that will love our country and will work hard to maintain our country.”

Hurricanes also reshaped migration patterns. Florida Gulf Coast counties lost residents after Hurricanes Helene and Milton, with Pinellas County shedding nearly 12,000 people. Taylor County in Florida’s Big Bend posted the steepest county-level growth decline in the nation, with a -2.2% drop.

But the hurricane migration was not limited to Florida. In the Blue Ridge Mountains, the county that is home to Asheville, North Carolina, had more than 2,000 residents leaving in the months after the remnants of Helene destroyed homes and cut off power and communications to mountain towns.

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The heavily criticized Biden administration response wound up being a key narrative in the 2024 presidential election cycle, and it will be brought up again in 2026 in the key battleground state of North Carolina.

Former Gov. Roy Cooper is facing former Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley in a high-profile Senate race that could help determine whether the GOP holds its narrow 53-47 majority for Trump’s last two terms.

“Roy Cooper’s botched response effort to Hurricane Helene was a complete disaster that left an estimated $53 billion in damage to businesses, homes, and infrastructure and over 100 people dead,” National Republican Senate Committee regional press secretary Nick Puglia said. “North Carolinians deserve a senator they can trust to show up when it counts, but failed Gov. Roy Cooper abandoned North Carolina families time and again when they needed him most.”

Despite the slowdown, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth led the country in total population gains out of the largest red state in the U.S., followed by battleground cities of Atlanta, Phoenix and Charlotte. Several midsize metros in Florida and South Carolina posted the fastest growth rates, led by Ocala, Florida, at 3.4%.

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It was followed by: metro Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, which has become a retirement haven; Spartanburg, South Carolina; Lakeland, Florida, located between the much larger metros of Tampa and Orlando; and Punta Gorda, Florida, about 35 miles (56.3 km) north of Fort Myers.

The New York metro area slid from growing by the most people in 2024 to ranking No. 13 in 2025 because of the drop in immigrants.

Still, births in the New York City area allowed it to gain more than 32,000 residents. The New York metro area led the nation in natural increase, or births outpacing deaths, followed by the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston metros.

“With so little natural increase, migration determines whether an area grows or declines, particularly in the big metro cores that have continuous domestic out-migration and are dependent on immigration,” University of New Hampshire senior demographer Kenneth Johnson told the AP.

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The metros where deaths outpaced births in the greatest numbers were Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and several Florida communities with large senior populations — the Sarasota, Daytona Beach and Tampa metro areas.

The two Texas metro areas topped the charts in natural increase because of their age structure and the fact that they have gained more people than anywhere in the U.S., You said.

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“Decades of domestic and international in-migration have produced relatively young populations, with a large share of residents in childbearing ages, alongside comparatively smaller proportions of senior populations,” she said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.