The White House posted data showing legal immigration from Muslim-majority countries has fallen nearly 96 percent since 2024, a drop Republicans call a major win for American sovereignty.
A White House account on X shared a graph this week tracking quarterly admissions from nations with Muslim majorities, and the picture was stark. The post highlighted a roughly 96 percent cut in legal immigration from those countries since 2024, attaching research visualized by the Cato Institute.
Fox News reported that the graph put peak monthly immigration from Muslim-majority nations above 22,000 people between July and October of 2024. By the start of January 2025, when President Donald Trump took office, that figure had fallen to almost zero.
The decline also showed up in late 2024, during the final stretch of former President Joe Biden’s tenure. The steepest collapse, though, lined up with the new administration.
Conservative lawmakers and commentators did not treat the chart as a curiosity. They treated it as proof the White House is changing who gets in.
Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, called it an “absolutely incredible victory for the American people, thanks to POTUS.”
Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., kept the math simple:
"4 percent to go! Thank you, President Trump,"
Brandon Herrera, the GOP nominee in Texas’ 23rd District, framed the drop as unfinished business rather than a finish line:
"These are the wins we need to continue to deliver on,"
Columnist Kurt Schlichter went further, urging the same pressure across every immigrant category. David Harrison wrote that he “voted for this, and will again.” Turning Point Action’s Ben Larrabee warned restless conservatives not to punish the GOP over other fights, arguing Democrats would reverse the shift overnight.
James Lindsay said critics claiming Trump and Republicans were idle on immigration had just been hit “squarely between the eyes.” Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet tied the moment to the next election:
"Vote like Western Civilization depends on it, because it does,"
The source of the chart did not join the celebration. David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, described in the coverage as a pro-immigration think tank, took credit for the underlying work and then attacked the policy it illustrated.
Bier wrote:
"Thanks for citing my work. You are violating the law and harming Americans while making the country less safe, less free, and less prosperous,"
That legal claim sits ahead of the facts on the record. Fox’s account noted that no court has ruled the current reduction in immigration from Muslim-majority countries illegal, even as challenges have been filed in district courts.
The fight is not new. In Trump’s first term, the administration imposed travel restrictions aimed at several predominantly Muslim countries. A federal district court in Hawaii blocked the policy. Appellate courts kept the pressure on. The Supreme Court ultimately held in Hawaii v. Trump that the policy was legal, a 5-4 decision remembered on its anniversary by protesters on Capitol Hill in June 2019.
That history matters because Bier’s charge recycles an old argument the high court already rejected on the earlier version of these controls. Lower-court skirmishes are not the same thing as a final holding that the White House is breaking the law.
Separately, Trump has touted a hard line on illegal entries, saying “zero illegal aliens” have been admitted over 13 months and contrasting that record with what he described as 25 million people allowed in under “Sleepy Joe Biden’s ideology.” The X post at the center of the Republican reaction, however, was about legal immigration flows from Muslim-majority nations, not the illegal-crossing fight alone.
The graph’s message was narrower and, for Trump’s allies, cleaner: admissions from that set of countries crashed from more than 22,000 a month at the 2024 peak to nearly none after the administration changed hands.
For voters who wanted fewer entrants from high-risk regions, tighter screening, and an end to the open-spigot years, the White House did not bury the result. It put the chart on the internet and let the numbers talk.
Control over who enters the country is a core job of the federal government. When the admissions line falls off a cliff and the people who asked for that result notice, that is not extremism, it is self-government doing what it said it would do.
