Congressional Budget Office estimates of deportations will make Trump angry

The CBO’s latest estimates reveal a gap between Trump’s tough talk on deportations and the much smaller numbers experts expected, writes Dr Abul Rizvi.

INDEPENDENT Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Updated September 2025 population projections From what they did for the USA in January 2025.

The President now predicts that the U.S. population will grow slower and age faster. Embers He will be most angered by the CBO’s modest estimates of how many undocumented immigrants Trump might deport, as well as the very modest number of voluntary deportations.

CBO finds:

…says the US population will increase from 350 million people in 2025 to 367 million people in 2055. Over the next 30 years, it will be smaller on average and grow more slowly than the agency had previously predicted. These changes are driven by lower projected net migration through 2033 and lower fertility rates for the period 2025-2055 than the agency predicted in January.

In CBO’s current projections, the population in 2035 is 4.5 million people (or 1.2%) fewer than projected in the agency’s January estimates. This gap will reach 5.4 million people (or 1.5%) in 2055. The population includes fewer people ages 25 to 54 (the age group most likely to join the workforce) than the agency previously estimated. Deaths are predicted to exceed the number of births in 2031, two years earlier than previously predicted.

The decline in net migration is mainly due to cuts to students, other temporary residents and offshore refugee intake.

The U.S. population growth rate is projected to slow significantly from 1% in 2023 to approximately 0.25% in 2025, rise marginally to approximately 0.3% in 2030, and then decline steadily to zero in 2055.

In contrast, China’s population is expected to decline by more than 100 million over the same period and age even faster. While some economists see this as a competitive advantage to the United States, the Trump Administration may see it as a hindrance.

But CBO’s predictions are most striking in the area of immigration enforcement.

In 2025, the US Budget provides an additional US$100 billion (AU$153 billion) over four years for immigration enforcement. This includes funding to hire more Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents (ICE) agents; additional detention space; additional immigration judges to hear cases; and travel and removals.

These funds were also used for border security measures, including the construction of new barriers and the improvement of existing barriers.

In this context, CBO:

‘…arrivals of other foreign nationals (i.e. arrivals of undocumented immigrants) are estimated to have fallen to low levels before the law came into force.’

In other words, the measures taken Biden The administration had already put the United States on a path to significantly reduce the arrival of undocumented immigrants, and the Trump Administration’s actions before new funds became available had done the rest of the work.

CBO estimates that the additional funding will increase the number of ICE agents by:

‘…additional staffing will result in 5,500 more arrests in 2026 than would otherwise be the case; this number will increase to 100,000 in 2029. To arrive at this estimate, CBO multiplied the number of additional agents it expected to hire by the average number of arrests a given agent made per year over the period 2008-2024.’

In terms of detention capacity, CBO estimates:

‘…An additional 100,000 beds will be available by 2028. Current detention levels exceed the capacity allocated in the ICE budget; CBO’s estimate of detentions takes into account that some additional beds will be allocated to support the existing facility population.’

CBO’s predictions for legal hearings by immigration judges:

…an additional 210,000 cases will be heard in immigration court from 2026 to 2029, resulting in 120,000 additional deportation orders. These estimates are based on the number of cases heard annually by each judge from 2017 through 2019 and the outcomes of those cases, as well as the agency’s assessment of the number of additional judges to be hired in the 2026-2029 period. CBO expects judicial capacity will not be able to keep up with the increase in arrests, although the number of immigration judges is projected to increase and removals to slow.

According to CBO estimates:

The additional 120,000 deportation orders described above will result in the removal of 70,000 people. CBO estimates that an additional 220,000 people who would have received deportation orders but not been removed without the law would have been deported; This effect is a direct result of the increase in detention rates under the law. In addition to the number of people expelled from the country, CBO estimates that 30,000 people (or 10% of all expelled people) will voluntarily leave the country during 2026-2030.

The estimate of 30,000 voluntary deportations compares with the 1.6 million self-deportations already requested by the Trump Administration. this prediction very controversial Because the US does not have exit controls like Australia does to make such a prediction. owned by Murdoch New York Post He released the Trump administration’s forecast without doubting its accuracy.

Overall estimates developed by CBO, including self-deportations, suggest that an additional 330,000 undocumented immigrants could be deported/departed during 2026-2030, with additional funding of $100 billion. Even if the CBO stays out 100 percent, this represents a spectacular failure of public policy, given Trump’s own estimates that there are between 10 and 20 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.

In July 2024, I wrote about possible obstacles to Trump’s deportation plans.

But the brutality, fear-mongering and feeding of Trump’s base perhaps stem from an objective and highly efficient use of public money.

Dr Abul Rizvi Independent Australian columnist and a former Deputy Secretary of the Immigration Service. You can follow Abul on Twitter @RizviAbul.

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