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."
A look at canceled programs and permissions
Hours after being inaugurated, Trump signed an executive order slashing a program created by the Biden administration to temporarily allow the entrance of 530,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The decision to end the program was later upheld by the Supreme Court — paving the way for individuals to be eligible for deportation.
Most of the people who entered the U.S. under this humanitarian parole hail from Haiti. Migrants under the program have pushed against the narrative that they are abusing the system.
Temporary protected status, or TPS, provides deportation protection and grants work permits to people from specific countries affected by war, natural disasters, political instability, or any other condition that makes the country unsafe for its nationals to return to. Each country's designation can last six to 18 months at the discretion of the secretary of homeland security.
Since January, the Homeland Security Department has ended TPS for 10 countries. Here is the breakdown, according to DHS, of how many people were affected:
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The agency moved forward with ending TPS for about 3,800 Syrians, though that effort is currently stalled in court. Lawsuits have also impacted the termination of Venezuela's TPS designation. While the program has been terminated, certain beneficiaries will keep their TPS through October 2026.
The Trump administration argues that parole programs like TPS are meant to be only temporary. But immigration advocates said that while the government can, and has, ended country-specific designations in the past, it typically must prove that conditions in the country have improved.
Schulte, from FWD.us, points to recent comments from Trump denigrating the situation in countries like Afghanistan and Haiti, and actions against Venezuela, as evidence that the U.S. does not consider these countries particularly improved or stable.
With each cancellation, DHS has offered monetary incentives and a 60 days' notice to leave the country. DHS did not respond to questions about how many people have taken them up on the offer of a $1,000 cash payment.
There are several pending lawsuits challenging the terminations of their TPS, and some people may be able to apply for other avenues for protection against deportation.
Eliminating CBP One, others
Another program that the Trump administration ended earlier this year is CBP One, a mobile app that allowed migrants to make appointments to seek asylum from inside the U.S.
From 2023 to January 2025, more than 936,000 people were allowed in the country. It's unknown exactly how many people entered the U.S. through the app and were still waiting on legal permissions when it was canceled.
In the spring, thousands of migrants who had entered the U.S. through the app and awaited asylum appointments received messages to leave. Many who entered with the app ended up getting detained in courthouses or in their neighborhoods.
Grebi Suárez, a Venezuelan barber who entered the U.S. through CBP One in January right before Trump was inaugurated, told NPR that last week he finally received his work permit and Social Security number.
"But I'm anxious and scared because some of my friends have received emails from the government telling them to self-deport," said Suárez, who was featured on an NPR story last year about his attempts to get to the U.S.
The State Department has also assisted the administration's goals of canceling permissions to be in the U.S. This year, 85,000 visas of all categories, including more than 8,000 student visas, have been revoked, according to a State Department official. That is more than double the number the year before.
DUIs, assaults and theft are some of the top reasons why visas were revoked, together accounting for almost half of the revocations in the past year, the official said in a statement.
"These are people who pose a direct threat to our communities' safety, and we do not want to have them in our country," the official said.
Earlier this month, the administration also moved forward with canceling the Family Reunification Parole of 14,000 people, mostly Central and South Americans. The program sought to make it easier for people with family-based petitions to be permitted to be in the U.S. while their immigration processes played out.
Migrants brace for more cancellations in 2026
Several thousand more migrants are at risk of their programs ending next year.
Other TPS permissions that expire next year are for El Salvador, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. If their programs, along with Ukraine's, get canceled, the U.S. may have no one residing under such a temporary status for the first time since the program was created in 1990.
Ukrainians who came under the Uniting for Ukraine parole program have been concerned their program could be next in line for cancellation. TPS for Ukrainians, which allowed about 100,000 people to enter the U.S., also is set to expire next year unless the administration renews it.
The Trump administration earlier this year paused the Uniting for Ukraine program and later resumed it. The pause affected thousands of Ukrainians, including Viktoriia Panova.
Her work permit expired in February, adding to the anxiety and uncertainty she's felt since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
"Ukrainians, we cannot create any plans for our lives because of this situation," Panova told NPR earlier this year. "We cannot live a full life."
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