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How many people have been deported
Executive summary
Available public reporting shows multiple, differing ways officials and analysts count “how many people have been deported.” The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has published headline claims that “more than 527,000 deportations” or “more than 400,000 deportations” occurred in 2025 periods cited by DHS [1] [2], while ICE’s own removals and OHSS monthly tables remain the operational records used by journalists and analysts [3] [4]. Independent trackers and outlets — including The Guardian, Reuters, Axios, Pew and nonprofit court-data projects — use ICE/CBP data and court records to produce lower, more granular counts and to flag methodological differences [5] [6] [7] [8] [9].
1. Different fences, different counts: why “deportation” is not a single number
Federal agencies and researchers count different events as “deportations” (removals, returns, self-deports, voluntary departures), so headline numbers vary: DHS’s public releases highlight “removals” plus voluntary or self-departures to reach totals like “more than 527,000” or “more than 400,000,” while ICE’s statistics pages present removals and returns in separate tables that are the usual operative measures for enforcement activity [1] [2] [3]. The OHSS monthly tables note that their unit of measurement is “immigration events” and that people can be counted more than once during a reporting period, underscoring how aggregation choices change totals [4].
2. DHS’s public tallies and the “2 million” narrative
DHS press statements in 2025 promoted a narrative of “over 2 million illegal aliens out” of the United States, combining roughly 1.6 million voluntary self-deports with several hundred thousand formal deportations/removals; specific DHS releases cited “more than 400,000 deportations” in one update and “more than 527,000 deportations” in a later one [2] [1]. Journalists and analysts point out DHS’s practice of blending self-deportation programs and removals into single headline figures, which can make comparisons with past years difficult [7].
3. ICE’s removals and the media trackers
ICE’s public statistics pages remain the primary operational source for removals (official “deportations”) and detentions; reporters and data projects use ICE’s removals table and CBP data to build time series that often produce lower month-by-month removal counts than DHS’s broader press tallies [3] [5]. The Guardian archives ICE’s biweekly detention releases and uses ICE’s “Removals: FY2025” table for its tracking, signaling reliance on agency operational data rather than aggregated political messaging [5].
4. Court orders, judges and the backlog: removals vs. removal orders
Immigration court outcomes add another layer: the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) shows that immigration judges issued hundreds of thousands of removal and voluntary departure orders in FY2025 — TRAC reported 470,213 deportation-related orders through August — but an order is not the same as an executed removal; enforcement capacity, legal stays and appeals affect how many orders translate into physical deportations [8]. TRAC also shows high percentages of completed cases resulting in removal orders in specific months, which helps explain why legal-system counts differ from operational removals [8].
5. Independent scrutiny and skepticism about the math
Analysts from Axios and other outlets question DHS’s arithmetic and aggregation choices, calling attention to the unconventional mixing of voluntary departures, survey-based estimates of people leaving, and removals in DHS’s headline “2 million” figure; Axios reported that DHS had stopped regular publication of some historical data and that the agency’s methods were harder to compare to past years [7]. Reporters and think tanks therefore triangulate DHS claims against ICE removal tables, OHSS monthly tables, court data and independent surveys to provide context [3] [4] [8] [7].
6. What reliable reporting agrees on — and what it doesn’t
Multiple outlets and data projects agree that hundreds of thousands of people were removed or left the U.S. in 2025 windows cited by DHS and that ICE removals are a significant portion of that total; The Atlantic and other long-form reporting note “more than half a million people deported” as a working figure in narrative reporting [10] [1]. However, sources disagree on whether DHS’s combined “removed or self-deported” number is an apples-to-apples comparison with prior administrations’ statistics, and independent analysts urge treating DHS’s headline totals with caution [7] [2].
7. How to get the most defensible number for your use
If you want an operational “deportation” count comparable across years: use ICE’s “Removals” time series and OHSS/ICE monthly tables and note the fiscal-year cutoff and whether the table counts events or unique people [3] [4]. If you want the administration’s policy-impact headline, cite DHS’s “removed or self-deported” figures but make clear the components (self-deports vs. removals) and that independent analysts have raised methodological questions [2] [1] [7].
Limitations and final note: available sources do not mention a single, universally accepted tally that captures every person once and only once; different official releases and data projects use different definitions and sometimes count events rather than unique individuals [4] [3].