An immigrant from Venezuela tries in vain to access the CBP One app a day after the second inauguration of President Trump on Jan. 21, 2025, in Nogales, Mexico. The incoming administration shut down the app, which was created by the Biden administration to allow migrants to schedule appointments to gain entry into the United States.
More than 1.6 million immigrants have lost their legal status in the first 11 months of President Trump’s presidency. The staggering number includes people who applied for and were accepted to come to the country on a wide variety of immigration parole, visa, asylum and temporary protected status programs. That number exceeds Philadelphia’s entire population.
This is the largest effort to take away deportation protections for migrants who are in the country legally. Immigration advocates say it’s very likely an undercount.
“These were legal pathways. People did the thing the government asked them to do, and this government went and preemptively revoked that status,” said Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, an immigration advocacy organization that has been tracking the efforts to delegalize immigrants.
“There’s nothing close to this. Like there’s no president of either party who has said, ‘Central to my effort is revoking the work authorization and legal status for millions of people.'”
Many of the immigrants who lost legal status have been in the country for years. Now, they fear what could happen should their immigration cases not process quickly enough. The administration has encouraged immigrants to leave the country as it gets rid of their legal authorization.
“The American taxpayer will no longer bear the financial burden of unlawfully present aliens,” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesperson Matthew Tragesser said, in response to a request for comment about concerns that the administration is making more people deportable.
In another effort to eliminate existing legal pathways, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced last week that the Trump administration would be pausing the diversity visa lottery program. In a post on X, she said the man accused of carrying out a deadly shooting at Brown University — and of killing an MIT professor — came to the U.S. through the program in 2017 and was granted a green card. While the cancellation doesn’t impact those already in the country, the lottery program faces an uncertain future going forward.
The White House says scrapping prior legal pathways and protections is part of its goal.
“The Trump administration has done more to limit migration, both illegal and legal, than any administration in history,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said during a press conference this fall. She touted all the ways the administration has cut off these avenues, including by pausing and revoking visas.
“Having a visa in the United States is not a right. It is a privilege and the secretary of state — if you are deemed contrary to our country’s foreign national interests — has the right to revoke that privilege.”