Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s mass deportation policy is directly helping lower housing costs for working- and lower-middle-class Americans. National apartment rents dropped 1.1 percent year-over-year last month and are down 5.2 percent from 2022, when rents peaked under President Biden.
In an interview with Fox Business, Bessent credited Trump’s immigration enforcement as a primary factor. He cited a recent University of Pennsylvania Wharton School study that found a 1 percent rise in population leads to a corresponding 1 percent increase in rent. Bessent pointed to the removal of over 2 million illegal immigrants as a major factor in cooling the rental market.
“Rents are down. You know the story that the Biden administration doesn’t want to talk about: The mass unfettered immigration that pushed up rents, especially for working Americans,” Bessent said.
Vice President JD Vance also addressed housing inflation during a speech in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Vance criticized Democrats for complaining about affordability while driving policies that caused the crisis. He linked the housing surge under Biden to the entry of over 20 million illegal immigrants, who absorbed housing inventory that would otherwise be available to American citizens.
“You go back to the four years of the Biden administration… it’s because Joe Biden let in 20 million illegal immigrants who took homes that by right go to American citizens,” Vance said.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner reinforced the message. A recent HUD investigation found that mass immigration since 2021 drove up demand and housing prices, especially for low-income Americans not receiving federal aid. The report noted that over 6 million foreign-born individuals entered the U.S. between 2021 and 2024, marking the largest short-term immigration surge in American history.
In several housing markets, HUD found that immigration accounted for nearly all growth in housing demand over the last four years, confirming that rising rents were closely tied to Biden’s mass migration policies.
