A WIRED story headlined “They Fled Trump’s America. Now They Regret It” has spent the past week circulating through Fox News and other outlets as evidence that Americans who moved abroad are turning back. The story rests on about five interviews.

No government counts how many Americans regret leaving, and the closest available data points the other way.

What the regret story is based on

WIRED profiled a handful of Americans who moved to Europe, several of them under pseudonyms. A woman living outside London plans to return in 2027 and described the UK’s healthcare and cost of living as worse than she expected.

A man who moved to Berlin in 2023 cited work and bureaucracy and has since moved back. A journalist returned to New York after three years in Spain and Scotland.

Those accounts are real. They’re also a sample of five, chosen by a reporter, from a population nobody has counted.

Why nobody can measure regret

The US government doesn’t track who leaves the country or who comes back. There’s no exit registration.

The State Department has stopped standing behind its own estimate of 9 million Americans abroad, citing a lack of authoritative data. A returning American simply re-enters on a US passport, and no form asks whether the trip home is permanent.

Few European countries publish departure counts by citizenship either, so arrivals are the most consistent measure available. Regret and return aren’t the same thing anyway. Some Americans who regret moving stay for a spouse or a job, while others go home happy when a contract ends.

Where arrivals are still rising

Arrivals of US citizens rose in 2025 in all five major European destinations AE tracks:

Germany, where one of WIRED’s subjects gave up and went home, posted the biggest increase of the five.

Interest in European passports is climbing too. Americans filed 18,910 applications to Ireland’s Foreign Births Register in 2025, up 63% from 2024. One series did dip. British citizenship applications from Americans hit a record 2,654 in early 2026, then fell 23% to 2,041 in the second quarter.

What the data does and doesn’t show

No country measures regret, so the WIRED accounts can’t be confirmed or ruled out as a trend. Rising arrivals don’t disprove regret either, because some of the Americans arriving now may leave later. What the numbers don’t show is any reversal.

In every major European destination AE tracks, more Americans arrived in 2025 than the year before.