How many legal immigrants were deported from the US in the past year and what were the trends?
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Executive summary
There is no clear, authoritative figure in the provided reporting that isolates how many lawful (legal) immigrants were deported in the past year; federal releases and independent trackers report totals for noncitizen removals, returns and “illegal aliens” rather than a clean count of removals of legal permanent residents, and the numbers government officials cite for overall removals in 2025 are contested [1] [2] [3]. Across sources, the observable trend is a sharp rise in enforcement and removals since 2023–2024 and especially into 2025, with official DHS/ICE tallies and political messaging claiming historic volumes while independent analysts and data aggregators urge caution and report lower or differently counted totals [4] [2] [3].
1. What the records actually measure — and what they do not
Federal dashboards and press releases from ICE and DHS report “removals,” “returns,” and “repatriations” of noncitizens and distinguish enforcement removals from voluntary returns or expulsions, but these sources do not neatly break out removals of lawful permanent residents versus other noncitizens in the public summaries provided here, so a direct answer to “how many legal immigrants were deported” is not available in the cited reporting [4] [1]. ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations page defines categories—those with criminal convictions, pending charges, and those without convictions who violated immigration law—but public snapshots summarize noncitizen removals overall rather than providing a labeled count of “legal immigrants” removed [5] [4].
2. The headline totals officials are citing for the recent year
DHS and related administration statements in 2025 have publicized very large figures for people who “left” the United States, reporting that more than 2 million noncitizens departed in months since January and that over 527,000 removals (deportations) had occurred by late October 2025, a tally the department used to frame an unprecedented enforcement surge [6] [2]. Media outlets sympathetic to the administration’s framing echoed totals like “more than 605,000 deportations” since January 2025 [7], producing a narrative of record-breaking deportation activity [6] [2] [7].
3. What independent trackers and analysts say instead
Independent researchers and FOIA-based trackers temper those claims. TRAC, which analyzes ICE case-level data, reported that some public administration claims overstate removals and that actual counted removals were substantially lower in comparable periods, finding, for example, that a published figure of 135,000 removals was closer to 72,000 when measured consistently, and asserting Trump-era average daily removal rates were not higher than the most recent Biden-era rates [3]. Migration Policy Center and OHSS datasets similarly emphasize that many “deportation” figures across recent years have included returns and enforcement returns—categories that differ from formal removal orders—and that the mix of removals versus voluntary returns shifted under different administrations [8] [1].
4. Trend picture: more removals, fewer border encounters, and a changing enforcement focus
Across 2023–2025 the broad trend in the cited sources is increased removal activity and a sharp decline in border encounters in early 2025: CBP reported dramatic month-to-month drops in southwest border apprehensions in early 2025 compared with 2024 [9], while ICE and DHS touted growing removal totals and accelerated operations [4] [2]. At the same time, internal and research analyses indicate a rising share of interior arrests and removals that involve people without violent criminal convictions—reports that ICE custody populations since late 2024 included a large proportion without criminal offenses, and analyses finding substantial percentages of detainees had no convictions [10] [4].
5. How to read conflicting claims and the political angle
The divergence between administration press releases and independent audits reflects different counting methods, time windows, and institutional incentives: DHS and ICE messaging highlight aggregate “left or were removed” figures to demonstrate policy success, while TRAC and other researchers push for apples-to-apples comparisons and case-level transparency that often yield lower counts or different interpretations [6] [3]. Because the available reporting in these sources does not provide a definitive breakdown by immigration status for “legal immigrants,” any precise numeric answer about lawful permanent residents deported in the past year cannot be confidently affirmed from the provided material [1] [3].