Analysis: Trump deportations near 1M, but few are criminals

The current Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts claims to have expelled nearly a million people through July of this year, but those include both voluntary returns and people turned around at the border, according to a new analysis by the former chief statistician for the Department of Homeland Security.

The level of deportations is sharply higher than during the Biden and first Trump administrations but well below the level of the 2000s. Deportations peaked at about 1.9 million in fiscal year 2000 as border enforcement ramped up under a sweeping immigration enforcement law in 1996.

Former DHS official Marc Rosenblum did the analysis, using only public records, for the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank for immigration research. Rosenblum resigned in protest in July against what he called the Trump administration’s “war on immigrants.” He had been with DHS since 2016 and executive director of the statistics office since 2023. 

Voluntary departures spike as immigrants face squalid detention, pressure to leave

Rosenblum emphasized in his analysis how many non-criminals have been either forcibly deported or pressured to leave voluntarily. Only 20% overall — and 28% of those in the U.S. for at least two years — have a criminal conviction.

“These data here do not suggest the administration is deporting the worst of the worst,” Rosenblum said.  

Even among convicted criminals, he added, the records were more likely to be immigration or traffic infractions rather than violent or other more serious crimes. 

DHS officials have maintained that living in the country illegally is enough reason to be deported. Tom Homan, the administration’s so-called border czar, told a Florida audience Oct. 1 that deportations have ramped up this fall and will be even higher in 2027. He was speaking to a Hispanic leadership event near Miami sponsored by the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank.

“Mass deportation is happening,” Homan said. “I think September’s going to be the highest deportations of any month in the history of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). Right now we’ve arrested more people than in the history of this nation.” 

He added later, “Wait until you see what we do next year.”

Rosenblum tallied 980,000 deportations, including arrangements to leave voluntarily after arrest, during the second Trump administration through July 31, about 18 months. About 300,000 had been arrested inside the United States, but most deportations were from the U.S. border with Mexico. There, 680,000 people were either turned around at the border or arrested at the border and deported after processing. 

The number of people leaving the country without being arrested is disputed — DHS earlier this year claimed more than 2.2 million “self-deportations,” apparently based on a decline in immigrant population in surveys. Others dispute that number, saying it’s more likely immigrants are avoiding government surveys. 

In his analysis, Rosenblum estimated the number of immigrants leaving of their own accord — not including people who had formal agreements to leave voluntarily — at between 310,000 and 1.5 million for immigrants who had been here at least a year. The departures include legal immigrants and those who had been living here illegally. 

Rosenblum’s estimate of departures, other than deportation, is imprecise, relying on Mexican census data on its returning citizens to estimate a “plausible level of departures” for other nationalities. 

The numbers in his analysis include people making arrangements to leave voluntarily rather than continue their court cases or contest a return at the border, about 170,000.  It may not include some people who came forward voluntarily to claim financial assistance to leave from the Project Homecoming program. 

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at [email protected].