The White House says it has reduced legalized migration from Muslim-majority nations by more than 90 percent, according to figures reported by Breitbart News, marking one of the sharpest shifts in U.S. immigration policy in decades.
Under President Joe Biden in 2024, the monthly inflow from countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Malaysia averaged roughly 14,000 migrants, Breitbart reported. By February 2026, that number had fallen to about 1,000 a month — a decline the outlet attributed partly to agency reforms under President Donald Trump, including expanded security screening.
Noah Pollak, a Trump deputy serving at both the Department of the Treasury and the Department of Education, framed the change as a landmark in the administration’s efforts against antisemitism. “This is the single most consequential policy to combat antisemitism in the US in the last decade and it’s not even close,” Pollak wrote on X, according to Breitbart. He added that the administration “will get no thanks or credit from legacy Jewish organizations.”
The figures come with significant caveats. Monthly immigration inflows are largely determined by Congress, not the White House alone, and the totals include new legal migrants, chain-migration relatives, and the refugee admissions ceiling set by the executive branch each year. The data also exclude Muslims arriving from countries with Muslim minorities, such as India, which Breitbart noted supplies a large share of legalized migrants through corporate-sponsored H-1B, L-1, F-1, and J-1 visas.
A Policy Shift Rooted in Decades of Debate
The reduction lands 25 years after the September 11 attacks, which Breitbart referenced in reporting the change. The outlet traced the arc of Muslim immigration policy across successive administrations: George W. Bush, it said, favored mass migration for economic growth while also boosting Islamic migration as part of a foreign-policy strategy aimed at reassuring Middle Eastern populations. Barack Obama then raised the inflow further, and Biden accelerated arrivals after the collapse of the Afghan government in 2021, a surge Breitbart attributed to progressive officials including former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and to pro-migration laws passed by Congress in 1990.
The U.S. resident Muslim population stands at roughly 4 million, according to the outlet, with concentrations in a relatively small number of political jurisdictions, New York among them. Breitbart characterized the demographic and electoral effects of that concentration as consequential, arguing that Muslim voters have tilted elections toward Democrats in places like Minnesota and New York City, where local Muslim leaders encourage high turnout for Democratic candidates.
Obama’s rhetorical approach to the subject drew pointed criticism in the Breitbart account. The outlet quoted his 2016 remarks at a mosque — “For more than 1,000 years, people have been drawn to Islam’s message of peace. And the very word itself Islam comes from salam, peace” — and described the statement as wrong, accusing him of downplaying civic conflicts between Islam and Christianity.
Breitbart also invoked a September 2025 speech in which Obama described America’s civic experiment. “There’s never been an experiment like this, where you have people from every corner of the globe show up in one place,” Obama said, per the outlet. Breitbart framed those remarks as evidence of a progressive ambition to remake American society through migration, arguing that Democrats use immigration to impose “massive diversity” that undermines locally shaped civic rules.
Business Groups and Critics Push Back on Premise
The policy has drawn opposition from business-oriented groups that favor higher immigration levels. Breitbart cited David Bier of the Cato Institute, describing him as a pro-migration activist, who said of the affected population: “About 30% of these immigrants were not Muslim, but they hate Muslims so much that they don’t care if this harms Christians.”
The source article’s framing extends well beyond the raw numbers. Breitbart presents the cutbacks as a setback to what it calls a progressive policy of importing diverse migrants to fragment civic rules, and argues the shift reduces the growth of antisemitic communities in the United States — a characterization contested by immigration advocates and civil rights groups who reject linking migration levels to hate crimes. The outlet also asserts that Orthodox Muslims “hate Americans’ way of life” and teach self-segregation, a generalization that critics of the policy’s proponents would dispute.
What is not in dispute from the reported figures is the scale of the decline: a drop from about 14,000 monthly arrivals to roughly 1,000 in the span of roughly two years, driven by a combination of executive screening requirements and broader immigration enforcement.
Trump has separately blocked illegal migration at the southern border and, according to Breitbart, is on track to sharply reduce overall levels of legalized migration in 2026. How far those reductions extend — and whether they hold against congressional control over legal immigration categories — remains an open question as the administration continues to reshape the system.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/immigration/2026/09/30/trump-deputies-slash-muslim-immigration-by-over-90-percent/