How many immigrants has Trump deported? The numbers are fuzzy.
The Trump administration has been eager to herald a verifiable security achievement of its first full month in office: reducing unlawful crossings at the Mexican border to just 8,326, the lowest level in two decades.
But administration officials have been notably less forthcoming about progress on another key campaign promise: The deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants.
Just how many migrants have been deported since the start of the second Trump administration six weeks ago?
It depends who you ask and what period you account for.
The New York Times reported that there were 18,000 deportations in February, leaning on limited U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data. Tracking Trump’s first month in office, through Feb. 21, Reuters put the deportation number much higher, at 37,660, citing unpublished Department of Homeland Security data. And a Department of Homeland Security official told the Daily Mail there were 50,000 removals of undocumented immigrants by the end of February, a report the White House blasted out in a release following the president’s joint address to Congress.
White House officials and Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, did not respond to multiple requests asking for clarification between the divergent numbers. The most recent ICE removal statistics published online are from September 2024.
The result is a hazy picture of how successful the new administration has been at working toward its goal of administering the largest deportation program of migrants in U.S. history.
“News organizations have reported differing numbers that may reflect different time periods, different agencies of government,” said Michelle Mittelstadt, the director of public affairs at the Migration Policy Institute. “So in the absence of a release of official data that encompasses deportations being carried out by ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and the U.S. military, it is not possible to know the pace of U.S. enforcement activity at this point.”
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The Biden administration deported 271,000 people in fiscal year 2024, the highest total in a decade, averaging out to about 22,500 deportations each month.
Vice President JD Vance once touted 1 million as the number the administration would attempt to deport annually. That would require the facilitation of 83,300 deportations each month, a pace that even the most favorable numbers show the Trump administration is lagging significantly behind.
Administration officials at all levels are pivoting to stress the decline of apprehensions at the southern border and ICE arrests when confronted with questions about the more arduous logistical challenge of deporting tens of thousands of people back to their home countries.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day. We have seen pretty significant increases in deportations and apprehensions and arrests, but we have to remember that President Biden gutted the entire immigration enforcement regime of this country. We are trying to rebuild,” said Vance during a trip to the southern border on Wednesday.
The vice president said the Trump administration wants to make it easier for undocumented immigrants to return home on their own accord, rather than triggering law enforcement action through raids and arrests.
To build more detention space for migrants, the Trump administration is also scouting space at dozens of U.S. military bases.
But even more crucial to deportations will be how much money Congress decides to appropriate to the Department of Homeland Security so it can fund more detention centers and planes to house the apprehended and transport them out of the country.
“We need Congress to step up and give us the money we need so President Trump can keep his promise to the American people,” Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, told reporters at the White House this week.
The Trump administration is asking for an additional $175 billion allocation for immigration enforcement and deportation resources in this year’s budget — a massive increase from the Biden administration’s immigration enforcement budget request.
In the final year of his term, Biden requested $26 billion for ICE and Customs and Border Protection, making Trump’s request nearly seven times larger.
This story was originally published March 7, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
