A breakdown of the Mexicans deported from the US: 4.4 million in 15 years, from Obama’s iron fist to Trump’s xenophobia

Donald Trump’s goal to undertake mass deportations of migrants targets hundreds of thousands of Mexicans in an irregular situation in the United States. The risk of being returned to their country of origin, however, is not new and will probably not be any greater this time than in previous years. A look at the Mexican government’s figures on deportations of compatriots shows that the U.S. institutional machinery against undocumented migrants works tirelessly. In three five-year periods, from 2009 to 2024, the U.S. government deported 4,439,331 Mexicans in an irregular immigration situation. Contrary to what one might think, Trump’s first administration was not the harshest, although it remains to be seen whether that situation will change now that the Republican has returned to the White House with a discourse more heavily charged with xenophobic and racist far-rightism.

The deportation figures reviewed by EL PAÍS cover the two terms of the government of Democrat Barack Obama (2009-2013 and 2013-2017), the first term of Republican Trump (2017-2021) and the administration of Democrat Joe Biden (2021-2025). The Obama administration has the reputation of being the one that expelled the most migrants of all nationalities from the United States. This condition is also expressed in the deportations of Mexicans. In his first government, Obama repatriated 1.8 million undocumented migrants to Mexico; in his second term, just over a million Mexicans suffered the same fate. Trump, in his first four-year term, deported 766,373 Mexicans. His successor, Biden, has returned 824,018 (in this last case, the figures for December 2024 and those for January of this year are not yet available).

In a single month, March 2009, the Obama administration deported almost 70,000 Mexicans, a sample of the Democrat’s aggressive anti-immigrant policy. Other months in the same year were almost as drastic: 63,000 deported in April, 57,000 in May, 54,000 in June. On the other side of the coin, April 2020, in the Trump era, is the month in which the fewest Mexicans were repatriated: 9,113. May of that year marks the second-fewest repatriations of Mexicans in the three five-year periods: 9,654. The average number of deportations per month in the period reviewed is 23,300.

According to data from the think tank Latino Donor Collaborative, there are 37 million Americans of Mexican origin in the United States, a figure that includes migrants and their descendants born in the U.S. The organization maintains that, in general, the Latino community contributes $3.6 trillion the GDP of the United States, based on data from 2022. Of that total, $2.06 trillion corresponds to the wealth generated only by the labor force of Mexican migrants.

The deportation data is collected in Mexico by the Ministry of the Interior, which is in charge of immigration policy. The combined numbers allow us to observe some demographic characteristics of repatriated Mexicans. For example: nine out of 10 Mexicans deported from the United States in the last three decades are men, and the rest are women (3.9 million versus 512,852), a sign that those who migrate north from Mexico the most are men.

Of the total number of Mexicans repatriated, almost 282,000 were aged under 18 (6.3%). The vast majority were deported with an adult, although there were also a few hundred cases in which the minors were unaccompanied. The year in which the most migrant minors were deported was 2024, the final year of the Biden administration, with a record of 28,270. The second-highest number of cases was in 2009, with just over 26,000. In 2017, the lowest number of returns of minors was recorded, with just under 9,000 cases. However, the vast majority of those repatriated were aged over 18 and of working age (more than 93%), so it can be assumed that they were migrants with some form of occupation at the time of their return.

The information from the Ministry of the Interior also allows us to know the state of origin of those Mexicans deported from 2010 onwards (before that year, the information was not broken down by place of departure). Eight Mexican states account for 48% of the migration to the United States in the three five-year periods reviewed: Michoacán, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Guanajuato, Puebla, Chiapas, Veracruz, and the State of Mexico. In other words: in the last 15 years, at least 2.1 million Mexicans left those places (the figure is necessarily higher, considering the Mexicans who remain in the U.S.). These eight states have something in common: they are located in central and southern Mexico, regions that have historically been less developed, in the sense that governments have not prioritized their industrialization in decades.

Conversely, the list of states that have seen the fewest migrants is headed by Baja California Sur, despite its proximity to the U.S. border. Campeche, Yucatán and Quintana Roo, located on the Mexican peninsula, the furthest point from the border, are also part of this group. Another notable case among these states is Tabasco, despite its location in the underdeveloped south of Mexico, next to Chiapas, Veracruz, and Oaxaca.

Figures compiled by the Mexican government help to understand the dynamics of migration to the United States. The departure of tens of thousands of people from the center and south of the country highlights the inequality gap that needs to be closed. For this reason, the massive return of migrants to their places of origin will put enormous pressure on states with weak economies. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, like her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has stated that a priority of her administration is to spur the development of the abandoned south so that inhabitants find opportunities there and are not forced to migrate. For now, the president has announced a series of support systems for Mexicans deported by Trump in this new era, from jobs to government transfers.

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