WASHINGTON — On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump repeatedly pledged to carry out the “largest deportation program in American history.”
Eight months into his second term — his administration is touting new data, revealing what officials describe as a record-breaking rate of removals.
On September 23, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that 400,000 non-citizens have been deported since Trump took office in January, setting the pace for 600,000 deportations by the year’s end.
An estimated 1.6 million non-citizens have also self-deported, according to officials.
“The Trump administration is on pace to shatter historic records,” the DHS said.
“The numbers don’t lie,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin added. “(Two) million illegal aliens have been removed or self-deported in just 250 days — proving that President Trump’s policies and Secretary (Kristi) Noem’s leadership are working and making American communities safe.”
How do these figures compare to those from past years and previous administrations?
ICE deportations
When focusing on data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Trump administration is indeed on track to outpace deportations carried out in previous years.
In fiscal year 2024 — which encompassed much of former President Joe Biden’s last year in office — ICE deported about 271,000 non-citizens, according to the agency’s annual report.
This figure was higher than every other year in Biden’s term and all four years in Trump’s first term, according to Reuters.
By comparison, during Trump’s first seven months in office, ICE deported just shy of 200,000 non-citizens, a DHS official told CNN in August. This puts the administration on track for a record-breaking rate of removals.
Total repatriations
When examining total repatriations — people returned to their country of origin — a more ambiguous picture emerges.
The DHS website lays out annual repatriation data going back to 2014.
This data includes not only ICE deportations, but those conducted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which “also deports people, including from within the 100 mile border zone,” Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a Migration Policy Institute (MPI) policy analyst, told McClatchy News.
The data is categorized into removals, enforcement returns, administrative returns and Title 42 expulsions — which were carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Removals are only one type of deportation, which is not a legally defined category,” according to the MPI. “Returns constitute the other major type, typically occurring at the U.S. border or a lawful port of entry.”
These figures indicate Trump’s deportation program may not be record-breaking.
“For reference, in fiscal year 2024, the Biden admin deported 685,000 (non-citizens),” eclipsing the 600,000 projected deportations this year, Bush-Joseph wrote in an analysis of the latest DHS figures. To reach this figure, she combined removals and enforcement returns.
This figure climbs to 777,580 when factoring in administrative returns — which include “people turned away at airports or who came to a port of entry,” Bush-Joseph said.
A DHS spokesperson did not immediately respond when McClatchy News asked if the latest deportation figures include removals and returns. Bush-Joseph said the latest data may include both.
Shift in strategy
“The difference with Trump is more people being arrested in the U.S. interior than before,” Bush-Joseph wrote in her analysis.
This shift in focus coincides with a rapid decline in unauthorized crossings at the southern border, according to NBC News.
Under Trump, daily ICE arrests have skyrocketed, increasing 250% in June when compared to the previous year, Reuters reported. And, while Trump has indicated he wants to remove “the worst of the worst,” ICE data reveals an increase in non-criminals being detained.
As of September 11, 58,381 migrants were in ICE detention facilities throughout the country, about half of whom have criminal convictions or pending charges, according to NBC News.
The mass detention program has been contested in numerous federal courts, with dozens of judges declaring it illegal, according to Politico. The White House has maintained that it is operating within the confines of the law.
The Trump administration has also signaled that deportations will rise in the future, as the recently passed congressional spending bill allocated billions toward immigration enforcement.
“DHS is just getting started thanks to President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill,” the agency said in its press release, “which is surging hiring efforts and turbocharging the arrests and deportations of illegal aliens.”
By BRENDAN RASCIUS/McClatchy News
Brendan Rascius is a McClatchy national real-time reporter covering politics and international news. He has a master’s in journalism from Columbia University and a bachelor’s in political science from Southern Connecticut State University.
