The country's immigrant population may have dropped by roughly 2 million people in the first six months of the year, according to new government data.

The new data offer an early – if imperfect – signal that President Donald Trump 's immigration crackdown may already be showing an impact.

Steven Camarota, director of research at the right-leaning Center for Immigration Studies, said the estimated decline of 2.2 million foreign-born people in the Current Population Survey was the largest such drop in a single year in three decades.

Either "something has fundamentally changed in America, or the response rate has dramatically changed," he said.

Demographers say it might be both – but either way, the new data has significant limits.

Jed Kolko, senior fellow at the nonpartisan Peterson

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