“Gone to Texas” still seems to ring true, with area growth attributable to newcomers, according to new population data.
The latest population estimates report from the U.S. Census Bureau published last week shows that San Antonio’s population continues to grow — driven largely by people moving to the area from out of state.
Between April 2020 and July 2024, the San Antonio-New Braunfels metro area added nearly 205,000 people, with 59% of that growth coming from domestic migration. The metro area’s population now sits at nearly 2.8 million, a significant increase from 2.6 million just four years ago, according to Census estimates.
However much of the area’s growth is coming from international migration as well, said Lloyd Potter, Texas’ State Demographer, who is a professor of demography at The University of Texas at San Antonio.
“[A lot] of the population changes we saw in Texas between ’23 and ’24 was from international migration,” and that’s never been the case before, Potter told the San Antonio Report. “That’s largely because the data that the Census Bureau received was data from the immigration naturalization service, and it captured what they refer to as humanitarian migrants — so essentially, refugees.”
Demographers across the state have been pushing for the Census Bureau to consider data from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service for years, Potter said, adding that anecdotally they were seeing in the news a lot of information about refugees coming into Texas, but state demographers were not seeing it in the data.
“I think they were just able to make the arrangements with the Homeland Security in order to gain access to the data and so that resulted in some pretty dramatic shifts in terms of magnitude,” he noted.
Increasingly, population growth in metro areas is being shaped by international migration, said Kristie Wilder, a demographer in the Census Bureau’s population division. While births continue to contribute to overall growth, the rising net of international migration is offsetting the ongoing net domestic outmigration we see in many metro areas, Wilder said.
Texas gained an estimated 562,941 people from international migration between July 2023 and July 2024.
Bexar County saw a 1.4% growth rate over that time period, with 0.5% of that being from natural growth, or births, and 0.9% of that being from migration. The area’s continued growth reflects both the state’s and the nation’s shifting demographic patterns, where international migration is now a key contributor to urban expansion, Potter said.
Overall however, while the San Antonio area did still see growth, the pace at which it’s been seen has slowed slightly compared to previous years. Despite the slower pace of overall state growth, Texas remains a central hub for migration, particularly in its larger metropolitan areas, census data found.
Counties outside of Dallas and Houston, including Kaufman, Liberty and Montgomery, ranked second, sixth and seventh in the country respectively for the highest percentage growth in population over that time.
Texas’ population changes are actively influencing policy, Potter noted.
“If you look at how much money Texas has been spending on border security, that’s really where a lot of this is coming from,” Potter said. “Now with the new administration, we’ve seen the immigration of refugees come to a standstill.”
Resources that were going toward supporting these populations are quickly drying up under the Trump administration, he added, noting that many of the organizations and staff members that were helping these populations are being heavily impacted.
Last month San Antonio’s Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services office (RAICES) laid off 61 employees. The layoffs come amid crackdowns by the Trump administration resulting in sweeping changes to immigration policies over the last two months.
San Antonio was identified as one of the first places where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans to arrest and deport people living in the country without legal status — an effort that began in late January.
And last month, the city announced it would be phasing out operations at its Migrant Resource Center, stating the center “has experienced a sustained and significant decline in the number of migrants transiting through San Antonio en route to their host city destinations.”
“I’m willing to bet we’re going to see the immigration numbers come down pretty dramatically from ’24 to ’25,” Potter said. “Really the only immigrants that will be reflected there will be those that are coming in to the United States with visas, and even that’s likely to be declining.”
