U.S. Deportations Hit 271,000 Last Year Under Biden, The Highest Level Since 2014

In the last fiscal year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported 271,484 immigrants to 200 countries, the highest number in a decade.

Most immigrants crossed the U.S. southern border illegally, fleeing authoritarian governments, poverty and economic distress.

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to establish the most extensive deportation campaign in American history immediately.

President Joe Biden took office in 2021, vowing to halt deportations. He sent Congress a bill to allow nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants to go on a journey to citizenship. However, the illegal border crossing surged, derailing his plans as the political backlash grew.

The border crisis forced the Biden administration to implement new rules restricting asylum claims, resulting in more deportations.

Deportations by ICE during Trump’s first term reached 267,260 in 2019. The deportees were more likely to be arrested while in the U.S. rather than recently crossing the border.

In 2024, most deportees were returned to Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Those countries cooperated with deportations, while Venezuela, which has one of the largest groups ICE is seeking to remove, was not cooperative.

ICE has about 6,000 immigrant enforcement officers, which has been the same for the past decade.

Tom Homan, former ICE director and Trump’s pick for border czar, said the new administration would focus on deporting people who threaten public safety and national security.

Homan noted that immigrants with pending deportation orders will be among the first to be sent to their home countries. But many of these people can not be sent back because their country won’t take them.

Trump says he will need assistance from prisons and jails across the nation to arrest migrants.

States like Texas are eager to cooperate with ICE, while states like California and Illinois have passed laws limiting cooperation because many immigrants do jobs that Americans won’t do.

The question of splitting up immigrant families looms after Trump did so many times in his first term. But Trump and Homan have said that families can stay together by leaving the country together.

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