Trump administration fails to meet its goal of deporting one million people per year
An MPI study shows that 980,000 migrants have been deported during the first 18 months of the administration, most of them from the border. Only 31% had a criminal record
The Donald Trump administration is failing to meet its goal of deporting one million people a year and remains far from achieving the largest deportation effort in U.S. history, a cornerstone promise of the Republican’s 2024 presidential campaign. In the first 18 months of his second term it has deported 980,000 people, according to a report published Thursday by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI). That figure exceeds the removals carried out during Joe Biden’s term and during Trump’s first presidency, but so far it does not surpass the totals recorded under the Barack Obama administration or those of other earlier presidents.
Since Trump returned to the White House, official monthly deportation statistics have stopped being published, aside from statements by individual senior officials. The MPI compiled independent figures based on information obtained from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under the Freedom of Information Act, and on data from the Deportation Data Project at the University of California, which provide a picture of how the deportation campaign is progressing. The conclusion is that, for now, Trump is not meeting his target, although the pace of interior removals has accelerated markedly in recent months.
For fiscal year 2026 — which ended September 30 — the administration completed about 660,000 deportations, an increase from the roughly 620,000 recorded in the first year of Trump’s second term. That figure is 26% higher than the 2021–2024 average, but it is far below the 1.86 million deportations recorded in fiscal year 2000 and well short of the president’s one-million-a-year target.
The analysis shows that even with encounters at the U.S.–Mexico border at historic lows because of Trump policies that have all but eliminated asylum, 69% of deportations involved people intercepted at the border. The remaining 30% (300,000) were migrants initially detained inside the United States who had likely been living in the country for years. “Despite everything happening inside the country, most deportations are still the result of encounters at the border,” says Marc Rosenblum, former executive director of the DHS Office of Immigration Statistics and the report’s author.
The large funding boost the administration has devoted to its immigration agenda — about $240 billion — has not produced the spectacular results the president expected. However, interior deportations have increased, rising from an average of 8,000 removals in the early months of the administration to about 19,000 in the most recent months.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin replaced Kristi Noem at the agency in March, promising that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests would be more efficient and carried out more discreetly. The deaths of two people at the hands of agents since he took office — Mexican national Lorenzo Salgado Araújo in Texas and Colombian national Johan Sebastian Durán Guerrero in Maine — returned ICE to the headlines, as did shootings that wounded other migrants. Overall, raids have been less conspicuous, but arrests have risen. In the past three months detention records reached new highs, exceeding 50,000 monthly arrests consecutively.
The new statistics also confirm that despite official rhetoric that the government is removing criminals, only 31% of those deported had criminal records, compared with an average criminality rate of 44% recorded during fiscal years 2009 to 2021. The most common convictions were for illegal entry or reentry and for traffic violations, including driving under the influence of alcohol or other substances. “These data do not show that the administration is deporting the worst of the worst,” Rosenblum sums up.
The analysis highlights that voluntary departures have multiplied tenfold, to 170,000, as the Trump administration has sought to sidestep the immigration courts — which are backlogged and handle removal cases. “A voluntary departure agreement forces a migrant to leave — that is, to be deported — without the opportunity to appear before an immigration judge. It is a key element in the administration’s efforts to speed up removals given the considerable backlog of pending cases in the judicial system,” Rosenblum explains.
Despite the rise in self-deportations, driven by government monetary incentives, the data contradict claims disseminated by the administration. “While the total number of immigrants leaving the United States — whether through deportation or voluntary departure — is much higher than at any time since at least 2014, it is highly unlikely that three million immigrants have left the country; and much less likely that three million unauthorized immigrants have done so,” the analysis concludes.
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