By MIKE SCHNEIDER, Associated Press

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration contributed to a year-to-year drop in the nation’s growth rate as the U.S. population reached nearly 342 million people in 2025, according to population estimates released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Related Articles

Trump visits Iowa trying to focus on affordability during fallout over nurse’s Minneapolis shooting

Today in History: January 27, Michael Jackson burned in filming accident

Officer fatally shoots an aggressive raccoon on a New York boardwalk

Los Angeles homeless services CEO charged with defrauding taxpayers to pay for luxury lifestyle

Shoveling snow? Over-exertion and cold temps can raise your heart risks

The 0.5% growth rate for 2025 was a sharp drop from 2024’s almost 1% growth rate, which was the highest since 2001 and was fueled by immigration. The 2024 estimates put the U.S. population at 340 million people.

Immigration increased by 1.3 million people last year, compared with 2024’s increase of 2.8 million people. The Census Bureau report did not distinguish between legal and illegal immigration.

In the past 125 years, the lowest growth rate was in 2021, during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, when the U.S. population grew by just 0.16%, or 522,000 people and immigration increased by just 376,000 people because of travel restrictions into the U.S. Before that, the lowest growth rate was just under 0.5% in 1919 at the height of the Spanish flu.

Births outnumbered deaths last year by 519,000 people.

The immigration drop dented growth in several states that traditionally have been immigrant magnets.

California had a net population loss of 9,500 people in 2025, a stark change from the previous year, when it gained 232,000 residents, even though roughly the same number of Californians already living in the state moved out in both years. The difference was immigration since the number of net immigrants who moved into the state dropped from 361,000 people in 2024 to 109,000 in 2025.

Florida had year-to-year drops in both immigrants and people moving in from other states. The Sunshine State, which has become more expensive in recent years from surging property values and higher home insurance costs, had only 22,000 domestic migrants in 2025, compared with 64,000 people in 2024, and the net number of immigrants dropped from more than 411,000 people to 178,000 people.

New York added only 1,008 people in 2025, mostly because the state’s net migration from immigrants dropped from 207,000 people to 95,600 people.

Tuesday’s data release comes as researchers have been trying to determine the effects of the second Trump administration’s immigration crackdown after the Republican president returned to the White House in January 2025. Trump made a surge of migrants at the southern border a central issue in his winning 2024 presidential campaign.

The numbers made public Tuesday reflect change from July 2024 to July 2025, covering the end of President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration and the first half of Trump’s first year back in office.

The figures capture a period that reflects the beginning of enforcement surges in Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, but do not capture the impact on immigration after the Trump administration’s crackdowns began in Chicago; New Orleans; Memphis, Tennessee; and Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The 2025 numbers were a jarring divergence from 2024, when net international migration accounted for 84% of the nation’s 3.3 million-person increase from the year before. The jump in immigration two years ago was partly because of a new method of counting that added people who were admitted for humanitarian reasons.

“They do reflect recent trends we have seen in out-migration, where the numbers of people coming in is down and the numbers going out is up,” Eric Jensen, a senior research scientist at the Census Bureau, said last week.

Unlike the once-a-decade census, which determines how many congressional seats and Electoral College votes each state gets, as well as the distribution of $2.8 trillion in annual government funding, the population estimates are calculated from government records and internal Census Bureau data.

The release of the 2025 population estimates was delayed by the federal government shutdown last fall and comes at a challenging time for the Census Bureau and other U.S. statistical agencies. The bureau, which is the largest statistical agency in the U.S., lost about 15% of its workforce last year due to buyouts and layoffs that were part of cost-cutting efforts by the White House and its Department of Government Efficiency.

Other recent actions by the Trump administration, such as the firing of Erika McEntarfer as Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, have raised concerns about political meddling at U.S. statistical agencies. But Brookings demographer William Frey said the bureau’s staffers appear to have been “doing this work as usual without interference.”

“So I have no reason to doubt the numbers that come out,” Frey said.

Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Census Bureau at https://apnews.com/hub/us-census-bureau.

By TRISHA THOMAS and DAVID BILLER, The Associated Press

MILAN (AP) — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will have a security role during the upcoming Milan Cortina Winter Games, according to information shared with local media by sources at the U.S. Embassy in Rome. The Associated Press independently confirmed the information with two officials at the embassy.

The officials who confirmed ICE participation on Tuesday said that federal ICE agents would support diplomatic security details and would not run any immigration enforcement operations.

During previous Olympics, several federal agencies have supported security for U.S. diplomats, including the investigative component of ICE called Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the officials said. They could not be named because they are not authorized to speak publicly.

HSI has a global footprint, and it’s common for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to provide security support at major international events.

The State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service does this as well, routinely supporting events like the Olympics. The use of U.S. law enforcement agencies in these contexts isn’t unusual. During the 2016 Rio Olympics, the Transportation Security Administration deployed officers to assist with airport screening due to the surge in visitors and the potential threat of attacks.

Citing images of masked ICE agents that have dominated coverage of unrest in Minneapolis, Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala said that ICE would not be welcome in his city, which is hosting most ice sports during the Feb. 6-22 Winter Games.

“This is a militia that kills, a militia that enters into the homes of people, signing their own permission slips. It is clear they are not welcome in Milan, without a doubt,” Sala told RTL Radio 102 before ICE’s deployment to the Games was confirmed.

ICE’s role had been reported over the weekend by the Italian daily il Fatto Quotidiano, prompting conflicting statements from Italian authorities who did not want to appear to confirm the agency’s role.

Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said Saturday he had not received confirmation of ICE’s deployment, but added that “I don’t see what the problem would be,” the news agency ANSA reported.

Related Articles

Trump visits Iowa trying to focus on affordability during fallout over nurse’s Minneapolis shooting

Today in History: January 27, Michael Jackson burned in filming accident

Officer fatally shoots an aggressive raccoon on a New York boardwalk

Los Angeles homeless services CEO charged with defrauding taxpayers to pay for luxury lifestyle

Shoveling snow? Over-exertion and cold temps can raise your heart risks

The Interior Ministry on Tuesday repeated that the U.S. has not confirmed the makeup of its security detail but insisted that “at the moment there are no indications that ICE USA will act as an escort to the American delegation.”

U.S. Vice President JD Vance will lead a delegation attending the Feb. 6 opening ceremony. The delegation will also include second lady Usha Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the White House announced earlier this month.

The confirmation of ICE’s role in Olympic security comes after RAI state TV aired video Sunday of ICE agents threatening to break the glass on the vehicle of a RAI crew reporting in Minneapolis, where ICE operations have sparked mass demonstrations. In the past three weeks, federal officers in Minneapolis have shot and killed two protesters against deportations and immigration enforcement.

AP writer Colleen Barry in Milan contributed.

Prominent Republicans and gun rights advocates helped elicit a White House turnabout this week after bristling over the administration’s characterization of Alex Pretti, the second person killed this month by a federal officer in Minneapolis, as responsible for his own death because he lawfully possessed a weapon.

The death produced no clear shifts in U.S. gun politics or policies, even as President Donald Trump shuffles the lieutenants in charge of his militarized immigration crackdown. But important voices in Trump’s coalition have called for a thorough investigation of Pretti’s death while also criticizing inconsistencies in some Republicans’ Second Amendment stances.

If the dynamic persists, it could give Republicans problems as Trump heads into a midterm election year with voters already growing skeptical of his overall immigration approach. The concern is acute enough that Trump’s top spokeswoman sought Monday to reassert his brand as a staunch gun rights supporter.

“The president supports the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding American citizens, absolutely,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

Leavitt qualified that “when you are bearing arms and confronted by law enforcement, you are raising … the risk of force being used against you.”

Videos contradict early statements from administration

That still marked a retreat from the administration’s previous messages about the shooting of Pretti. It came the same day the president dispatched border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota, seemingly elevating him over Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino, who had been in charge in Minneapolis.

Within hours of Pretti’s death on Saturday, Bovino suggested Pretti “wanted to … massacre law enforcement,” and Noem said Pretti was “brandishing” a weapon and acted “violently” toward officers.

“I don’t know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign,” Noem said.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, an architect of Trump’s mass deportation effort, went further on X, declaring Pretti “an assassin.”

Bystander videos contradicted each claim, instead showing Pretti holding a cellphone and helping a woman who had been pepper sprayed by a federal officer. Within seconds, Pretti was sprayed, too, and taken to the ground by multiple officers. No video disclosed thus far has shown him unholstering his concealed weapon -– which he had a Minnesota permit to carry. It appeared that one officer took Pretti’s gun and walked away with it just before shots began.

As multiple videos went viral online and on television, Vice President JD Vance reposted Miller’s assessment, while Trump shared an alleged photo of “the gunman’s gun, loaded (with two additional full magazines!).”

Swift reactions from gun rights advocates

The National Rifle Association, which has backed Trump three times, released a statement that began by casting blame on Minnesota Democrats it accused of stoking protests. But the group lashed out after a federal prosecutor in California said on X that, “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.”

That analysis, the NRA said, is “dangerous and wrong.”

FBI Director Kash Patel magnified the blowback Sunday on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo.” No one, Patel said, can “bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple.”

Erich Pratt, vice president of Gun Owners of America, was incredulous.

“I have attended protest rallies while armed, and no one got injured,” he said on CNN.

Conservative officials around the country made the same connection between the First and Second amendments.

“Showing up at a protest is very American. Showing up with a weapon is very American,” state Rep. Jeremy Faison, who leads the GOP caucus in Tennessee, said on X.

Trump’s first-term vice president, Mike Pence, called for “full and transparent investigation of this officer involved shooting.”

A different response from the past

Liberals, conservatives and nonpartisan experts noted how the administration’s response differed from past conservative positions involving protests and weapons.

Multiple Trump supporters were found to have weapons during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump issued blanket pardons to all of them.

Republicans were critical in 2020 when Mark and Patricia McCloskey had to pay fines after pointing guns at protesters who marched through their St. Louis neighborhood after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. And then there’s Kyle Rittenhouse, a counter-protester acquitted after fatally shooting two men and injuring another in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during the post-Floyd protests.

“You remember Kyle Rittenhouse and how he was made a hero on the right,” Trey Gowdy, a Republican former congressman and attorney for Trump during one of his first-term impeachments. “Alex Pretti’s firearm was being lawfully carried. … He never brandished it.”

Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor who has studied the history of the gun debate, said the fallout “shows how tribal we’ve become.” Republicans spent years talking about the Second Amendment as a means to fight government tyranny, he said.

“The moment someone who’s thought to be from the left, they abandon that principled stance,” Winkler said.

Meanwhile, Democrats who have criticized open and concealed carry laws for years, Winkler added, are not amplifying that position after Pretti’s death.

Uncertain effects in an election year

The blowback against the administration from core Trump supporters comes as Republicans are trying to protect their threadbare majority in the U.S. House and face several competitive Senate races.

Perhaps reflecting the stakes, GOP staff and campaign aides were reticent Monday to talk about the issue at all.

The House Republican campaign chairman, Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, is sponsoring the GOP’s most significant gun legislation of this congressional term, a proposal to make state concealed-carry permits reciprocal across all states.

The bill cleared the House Judiciary Committee last fall. Asked Monday whether Pretti’s death and the Minneapolis protests might affect debate, an aide to Speaker Mike Johnson did not offer any update on the bill’s prospects.

Gun rights advocates have notched many legislative victories in Republican-controlled statehouses in recent decades, from rolling back gun-free zones around schools and churches to expanding gun possession rights in schools, on university campuses and in other public spaces.

William Sack, legal director of the Second Amendment Foundation, said he was surprised and disappointed by the administration’s initial statements following the Pretti shooting. Trump’s vacillating, he said, is “very likely to cost them dearly with the core of a constituency they count on.”

___

Associated Press writer Kimberlee Kruesi in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report.

Related Articles

Trump visits Iowa trying to focus on affordability during fallout over nurse’s Minneapolis shooting

The shootings in Minneapolis are upending the politics of immigration in Congress

Death toll from US strikes on alleged drug boats reaches 126 people

Trump threatens to hike tariffs on South Korean goods over inaction on trade deal

Federal judge hears arguments over lawsuit to end immigration action

By Karen Garcia, Los Angeles Times

Starting next month, travelers who want to board a domestic flight without a Real ID will have to pay $45 to have their identity verified through the Transportation Security Administration’s new security screening program.

On Feb. 1, if you attempt to get through an airport security checkpoint without a Real ID, or another TSA-approved form of identification, you have the option to verify your identity through the modernized alternative-verification program, officially called TSA Confirm.ID.

If you choose to use Confirm.ID you will be charged a $45 fee.

TSA announced the new identification verification program in December, saying it is essential to traveler safety.

“Because it keeps terrorists, criminals, and illegal aliens out of the skies and other domestic transportation systems such as rail,” said Adam Stahl, acting deputy administrator for the agency. “The vast majority of travelers present acceptable identification like Real IDs and passports, but we must ensure everyone who flies is who they say they are.”

More than 94% of passengers currently use their Real ID or other acceptable form of identification, according to TSA. About 58%, more than 19 million, of all driver’s license and ID cardholders in California have a Real ID, according to the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

Opting to use Confirm.ID, here’s how to pay the $45

If you don’t have a Real ID or another TSA-approved form of identification you’ll be presented with the option to confirm your identity with Confirm.ID at a TSA checkpoint, before entering security lines.

Anyone 18 and older must show TSA their Real ID or another TSA-approved form of identification. Children under 18 do not have to provide a form of identification for domestic flights, according to TSA.

To use the Confirm.ID option you’ll need to submit a form and make a payment online either before you arrive or when you’re at the airport.

The form and payment can be submitted through the website pay.gov.

To make a payment you’ll need to provide:

—Your full legal name

—Your travel start date

—A valid form of payment. The website accepts payments via bank, Venmo or PayPal or a debit or credit card.

Once the form and payment are submitted online you’ll receive a receipt in your email. TSA recommends you keep this email, take a screenshot or print the receipt because you’ll need to present this at a TSA checkpoint as proof of payment.

The identity verification takes place at the airport.

How Confirm.ID works

After travelers alert TSA that they’re going to use the Confirm.ID option and provide proof of payment, they will need to provide their full legal name, address and date of birth.

In a November filing with the Federal Register, TSA said the proposed program will use a new biometric kiosk system to verify identification before each traveler without a Real ID or other acceptable form of identification is allowed past the TSA checkpoint.

It’s unclear whether the kiosks have been implemented at airports yet.

Related Articles

What travelers can expect as Southwest Airlines introduces assigned seats

New Museum of Illusions brings mind-boggling fun to downtown Detroit

Inside Super Bowl week’s concerts, parties and celebrity scene heading into big game

Historic love letters from royals, rogues and romantics go on show at Britain’s National Archives

Six must-see travel destinations for 2026

“Travelers will process with a kiosk system that captures their biometric data and compares it to TSA’s Secure Flight watch lists,” said Tom Spagnola, senior vice president of partner relations at CheapOair.

Biometrics uses physical characteristics, such as fingerprints, facial recognition software and retinal scans to verify an identity. TSA already uses such methods for verifying digital IDs using facial recognition software.

If your identity is validated through Confirm.ID, that approval is valid for 10 days, allowing travelers to use it as much as they want within that period.

©2026 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.