Have people legally in the US or US citizens been deported before 2024?
Executive summary
There are documented cases in which people who were legally in the United States — including U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents — were nonetheless detained and in some instances sent abroad; such incidents have been reported especially during aggressive enforcement periods and include both modern examples and older cases Trumpadministration" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">[1] [2] [3]. At the same time, federal removal policy and official statistics focus on noncitizens, and DHS/ICE insist removals target aliens, meaning the clearest pattern is that citizen deportation is illegal and rare but not unheard-of in practice due to errors, misclassification, or contested paperwork [4] [3].
1. Clear rule, messy reality: the law versus what happens on the ground
U.S. law does not permit the deportation of U.S. citizens; removal procedures and ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations are designed to target “aliens” rather than citizens, and ICE’s public dashboards separate arrests and removals by country of citizenship and immigration status [4]. Yet reporting and government documents show the system sometimes misidentifies or detains citizens — producing cases where people born in the U.S. or holding proof of citizenship have been caught up in detention and even put on flights out of the country, a pattern documented in contemporary Trump‑era reporting and compilations [1] [3].
2. Documented cases before and after 2020: examples that matter
Investigations and news accounts cite specific incidents that predate 2024: for example, one case documented by reporting traces a deportation order that officials said dated back to 2006 even while the person claimed U.S. citizenship, showing that errors spanning years can surface in removal records [2]. Congressional briefings and media tracking compiled lists of “U.S. citizens caught up in deportation operations,” showing multiple instances where newborn or U.S.-born children and adults with birth certificates or passport claims were detained and in some accounts deported alongside family members [3].
3. How these mistakes happen: paperwork, custody histories and local jails
Mistaken removals are often tied to administrative breakdowns: old orders, misfiled records, or custody histories that include earlier immigration proceedings; local jails feeding ICE rosters and biometric systems that flag names can convert traffic stops and arrests into removal actions, producing collateral detentions of people with lawful status or citizenship [5] [4]. Reports stress that when local law enforcement automatically shares arrestees with ICE, individualized verification can fail, and that has contributed to cases where citizens were held or removed [5].
4. Scale and politics: rare events, high visibility, and contested counts
Official statistics show hundreds of thousands of removals annually focused on noncitizens, and DHS/ICE emphasize removals of aliens in their enforcement tallies [4]. Political messaging and agency press releases frame mass removal initiatives as large-scale accomplishments, but independent analysts flag problems with how removals are counted and question whether headline numbers obscure composition and errors — an important context for interpreting claims about deportation totals and incidental citizen cases [6].
5. Judicial and watchdog responses: courts, lawsuits, and whistleblower claims
When citizenship claims are raised, courts and advocacy groups have sometimes intervened to block removals or secure returns; recent litigation and whistleblower allegations during aggressive enforcement campaigns have produced orders to return people and have prompted scrutiny of agency practices [1] [3]. At the same time, reporting shows agencies sometimes contest media accounts, and public records are imperfect, so the legal aftermath is often piecemeal rather than systemically resolved [3] [1].
6. Limits of available reporting and what that means for conclusions
The sources provided emphasize incidents during periods of heightened enforcement (notably the Trump-era second administration and later reporting) and document specific mistaken deportations and detentions, but they do not allow a complete count of all citizen deportations before 2024; therefore the accurate and provable claim is this: deportation of U.S. citizens is illegal and uncommon, yet there are documented instances — predating 2024 and persisting into later enforcement waves — where citizens or legally present people were detained or removed because of administrative error, misidentification, or contested records [2] [3] [1] [4].