The White House's Rapid Response 47 account on Tuesday posted a graphic showing that legal immigration from Muslim-majority nations has been cut by 96 percent since President Donald Trump returned to office — a figure drawn from research published Monday by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that has long advocated for looser immigration policy.
According to Cato's report, monthly immigrant visa issuances and permanent lawful refugee admissions from 45 majority-Muslim countries fell from 21,096 in December 2024 to 808 in February 2026. The decline touched nearly every majority-Muslim nationality. Afghans accounted for roughly one in four of the total drop, falling from 5,563 legal immigrants and refugees in December 2024 to just nine in February 2026 — a 99.8 percent decline. Pakistanis saw a drop of 2,963, or 97.9 percent. Only Qatar, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates recorded increases, while Turkey saw the smallest decline at 8 percent, per Cato's data.
The White House account celebrated the numbers, and Republican supporters online followed suit.
Commentary from Townhall's Joe Chalfant argued the visa-level reductions represent a more durable win than border enforcement alone, pointing out that when illegal crossings are suppressed, visa overstays become the primary pathway to unlawful residence — and that cutting visa issuances at the source closes that door.
"Legal immigration from Majority-Muslim Nations Was Cut 96% Since 2024," the Cato report is titled.
The researcher behind the analysis did not welcome the attention. According to RedState's account, the Cato researcher pushed back on the White House's use of the data, saying, "Thanks for citing my work. You are violating the law and harming Americans while making the country less safe, less free, and less prosperous." The researcher's claim that law is being violated is his characterization; Cato has not published a legal finding to that effect, and the administration has defended its immigration actions as lawful exercises of executive authority.
The political timing is notable. Muslim immigration and Islam have become larger storylines over the past year. Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani became New York City's first Muslim mayor in 2025, seven years after he was naturalized as a U.S. citizen, per the Fox News Politics report. Abdul El-Sayed, a Democrat, is locked in a tight race against Republican Mike Rogers, according to the same report.
Trump campaigned in 2016 on a proposed ban on Muslim entry to the United States, later describing his travel ban as a constitutionally defensible version of that idea. During the 2024 campaign, he said he would bring back a stricter version — and the State Department numbers through February 2026 indicate that promise has been carried out at the visa-issuance level.
The White House has not released a formal statement explaining the legal mechanism behind the drop beyond the posted graphic. It is not yet known what specific executive actions or agency directives produced the February 2026 figures, or whether the trend has continued past that month.
For everyday Americans, the practical effect is straightforward: far fewer immigrant visas and refugee admissions are being granted to nationals of countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan, and 43 others. Whether that translates into long-term changes in immigration flows will depend on whether the policies remain in place — and whether courts intervene.
Our Take
This is what winning looks like, and the establishment can't stand it.
Ninety-six percent. From 21,096 down to 808. In two months of data, that is not a rounding error. That is a policy working exactly as promised. Afghans: 5,563 to nine. Pakistanis down nearly 98 percent. Forty-five countries affected. This is the difference between the Trump-Vance administration and the Biden years in a single chart.
And notice the reaction. The researcher whose own work produced these numbers lashed out at the White House for citing it, insisting the policy is unlawful and harmful. But here is the question Cato and its allies never answer: harmful to whom? To the American worker whose wages were undercut? To the communities asked to absorb thousands of arrivals with no vetting standard worth the name? The people who funded decades of open-borders policy have never once polled the towns that paid the price.
This is not about hostility to legal immigrants. It is about a country deciding who enters, on what terms, and why — which is what every sovereign nation on earth does. The GOP should run on these numbers in every competitive district in the country. And the America First base should be asking the next question: what about the visa overstays already here — are deportations next?
Patriots, the graph is the message. Share it before the legacy media figures out how to bury it.
