Trump White House Celebrates 96% Plunge in Legal Immigration From Muslim Countries

President Donald Trump’s social media team saluted his administration for drastically cutting the number of legal immigrants who have come to the U.S. from Muslim-majority countries since he reentered office.

The “Rapid Response 47” X account on Tuesday posted a graphic from the Cato Institute, showing immigration from Muslim-majority nations has been sliced 96% since ex-President Joe Biden left the White House.

On Monday, the Cato Institute reported, ” Monthly immigrant visa issuances and permanent lawful refugee admissions fell from 21,096 in December 2024 to 808 in February 2026″… and the Rapid Response account seemed pretty stoked about it.

The Cato Institute added:

[The] decline has affected nearly every majority-Muslim nationality in the world. Afghans accounted for fully one in four (27 percent) of all the drop for majority-Muslim countries, going from 5,563 legal immigrants and refugees in December 2024 to just 9 in February 2026—a 99.8 percent decline. Pakistanis followed with a drop of 2,963, or 97.9 percent.

Only three countries—Qatar, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates—saw increases during this period. Notably, Turkey had the smallest decline of just 8 percent.

Tuesday’s post comes after Islam and Muslim immigration have become bigger stories over the last year.

Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani (D) notably became New York City’s first Muslim mayor in 2025, seven years after he was naturalized as a U.S. citizen. And Abdul El-Sayed (D), who is currently locked in a tight race against Mike Rogers (R) in Michigan,  is vying to become America’s first Muslim senator; El-Sayed has been hit with a lot of questions lately about his decision to have Hasan Piker flank him on the campaign trail, after the socialist streamer declared the U.S. “deserved” the 9/11 terror attacks.

Trump has seemed to have a pretty chummy relationship with Mamdani, with the two meeting multiple times at the White House and, just last week, at the mayor’s mansion in NYC. The president said Mamdani has “potential” to be a “great mayor” in his eyes.

He hasn’t been so warm to El-Sayed, with Trump calling him a “communist loser who hates Jews and Israel.” 

And all of this comes follows Trump cracking down on immigration from several Muslim-majority countries in his first term, which his critics dubbed a “Muslim ban.”

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