How many us citizens have accidently been deported by USA

1. What the official reviews say: a concrete but limited tally

The most concrete figure comes from a government watchdog review: the GAO’s analysis and reporting assembled by advocacy groups and the press found that 70 people who appeared to be U.S. citizens were deported in the period the GAO examined — a headline number that has been widely cited in reporting and advocacy work ^{[2] [1]}. That same body of work shows broader enforcement activity against people later identified as potential citizens: ICE data reviewed by outside researchers recorded hundreds of arrests and dozens of detentions of people flagged as possibly U.S. citizens, illustrating the gap between initial enforcement actions and final determinations ^[2].

2. Wider datasets and investigative tallies: indicators of a larger problem

Independent analyses complicate the picture: TRAC’s review — cited by the American Immigration Council — identified at least 2,840 people as potentially eligible for removal between 2002 and 2017, with at least 214 taken into custody and ICE arrests of 674 potential citizens over the government’s review period, underscoring a pattern of misidentification even if not every case ended in removal ^[2]. Investigative reporting by ProPublica found the government does not systematically record how often its agents detain or otherwise process Americans, and their own tally — explicitly described as almost certainly incomplete — documented more than 170 U.S. citizens held by immigration agents, including vulnerable children and people denied immediate access to counsel ^[3].

3. Why the exact number is unknowable: record-keeping and policy gaps

The GAO concluded that ICE and CBP have inconsistent guidance and do not systematically track citizenship investigations; ICE’s data systems can record a citizenship investigation but are not required to update the citizenship field if an officer later finds evidence of U.S. citizenship, producing official blind spots that make any comprehensive count impossible from available federal data ^[1]. ICE’s public enforcement statistics focus on removals and arrests by reported nationality and offense categories but do not reliably surface instances where citizens were mistakenly treated as noncitizens, meaning official dashboards cannot be used to produce a definitive total ^{[4] [5]}.

4. Confirmed examples and legal context: rare but consequential

Court reporting and compilations of individual cases show that wrongful detention and in some instances removal have occurred, sometimes involving children or Native American and Latino community members, leading members of Congress and advocacy groups to demand investigations and legislative fixes ^{[6] [7]}. Legal doctrine is clear that a U.S. citizen cannot legally be deported, but documented cases and judicial findings — including instances cited in reporting and on case compilations — make plain that administrative failures and defective record-keeping have allowed unlawful expulsions or forced separations to happen ^[6].

5. Bottom line and reporting limits

The defensible, evidence-based bottom line is that at least 70 U.S. citizens were removed in the period the GAO examined and that hundreds more were arrested, detained, or mistakenly flagged as removable in other datasets; beyond that, no authoritative, agency-verified tally exists because ICE and CBP do not consistently record and update citizenship outcomes, and investigative tallies (for example ProPublica’s) suggest the list of harmed citizens could be larger than formal counts indicate ^{[2] [1] [3]}. Reporting limitations: publicly available sources do not allow a single definitive total across all years, and any wider estimate depends on imperfect audits, incomplete agency data, and independent journalistic tallies ^{[1] [3]}.