How many criminals with a proven record were deported from the USA in 2023 for comparison?
Executive summary
A single authoritative public count of how many people with proven criminal convictions were deported from the United States in calendar year 2023 does not appear in the available public reporting; based on federal removal totals for 2023 and contemporary estimates of the share of removals involving people with convictions, the best evidence-supported range is roughly 150,000–210,000 convicted individuals removed in 2023, with important caveats about sources and definitions [1] [2] [3].
1. The headline numbers: total removals in 2023 and why they matter
Federal reporting and major news analyses place total deportations/removals in 2023 in the high hundreds of thousands—The New York Times analysis cites roughly 590,000 deportations in 2023—making any percentage-based estimate of “criminal” removals sensitive to the baseline total used [1].
2. Two different ways analysts classify “criminal” and how that changes the count
Advocates, think tanks and government sources use different definitions—ICE and DHS often count people with pending charges as “criminal arrests,” while academic analysts separate convictions from pending charges and immigration-only violations, and the Migration Policy Institute and Cato Institute produced divergent snapshots in 2024–2025 showing between about 26 percent and 35 percent of ICE detainees had criminal convictions, figures that directly change any estimate of convicted removals when applied to the 2023 removal total [3] [2].
3. Applying those percentages to 2023 removals produces a range, not a single figure
If the 590,000 removals figure for 2023 (used by The New York Times) is taken as the baseline and one applies MPI’s lower-conviction share (~26 percent), the implied number of convicted deportees in 2023 is about 153,000; applying Cato’s higher estimate (~35 percent) gives about 206,500 convicted deportees—both calculations are straightforward arithmetical projections but rest on combining different datasets and definitions and therefore must be treated as estimates [1] [3] [2].
4. Conflicting signals in public data and why precise accounting is elusive
ICE maintains large dockets and publishes varied statistics—Congressional and DHS tables report removal orders and categories, and ICE has identified hundreds of thousands of noncitizens with criminal histories on its docket, yet that does not equal an annual deportation count of convicted individuals because many on dockets are not removed in the same year or are counted under different legal categories; independent researchers and advocacy groups have produced contradictory impressions—some emphasizing that a majority of recent deportations had no convictions, others pointing to substantial numbers of convicted noncitizens targeted for removal—illustrating that public reporting combines removal totals, detention snapshots, docket inventories and differing definitions of “criminal” [4] [5] [6].
5. Bottom line and how to use this number responsibly
There is no single, undisputed public tally that says “X convicted criminals were deported in 2023”; using available public totals for 2023 removals (≈590,000) and contemporaneous estimates of the convicted share (roughly 26–35 percent) yields an evidence‑based estimate of approximately 150,000–210,000 deportations of people with proven criminal convictions in 2023, but that range should be treated as an informed approximation because data sources differ in definitions (convictions vs. pending charges), timing (dockets vs. removals) and reporting methods (agency counts vs. independent analyses) [1] [3] [2].