What studies or reports analyze religion and deportation patterns from 2017–2021?

1. What existing reports directly address religion-linked deportations?

The clearest, directly relevant pieces are thematic surveillance and country reports: the U.S. Department of State’s International Religious Freedom reports document individual cases where religious activity triggered fines or deportation orders in specific countries and thus supply country-level instances rather than aggregated global statistics ^[4]. Pew Research Center’s analyses of government restrictions and social hostilities include quantified counts of religion-related displacements and deportations — noting 38 countries with such incidents in 2021, and explaining government responsibility in 29 of those cases — giving an empirical baseline for 2021 specifically ^{[1] [5]}.

2. Global indices and what they can — and cannot — tell you

Pew’s government-restrictions and social-hostilities indices measure broad trends and incidents (e.g., SHI medians and country counts) and explicitly include displacements and deportations as one type of physical harassment. That makes these datasets useful for identifying where religion-related deportations were reported and for comparing 2017–2021 trendlines in restrictions and hostilities, but they are not detailed deportation-flow datasets tied to individual-level religion markers ^{[5] [7]}. In short: Pew shows incidence and trends, not person-level deportation records by religion ^[1].

3. Academic literature: context, mechanisms and gaps

Scholarly reviews and articles synthesize how religion shapes migration, asylum claims and integration but rarely provide deployable deportation counts by faith for recent years. Reviews such as “The State of the Evidence in Religions and Forced Migration” summarize evidence that religion is a key dimension of forced migration and that faith actors can both protect and harm migrants (including complicity in detention/deportation), but they stop short of producing time-series deportation statistics broken down by religion for 2017–2021 ^[6]. Broader migration-and-religion scholarship explains mechanisms — persecution, state favoritism, or social hostility — that produce religion-linked removals without delivering a consolidated deportation-by-religion dataset ^{[8] [9]}.

4. U.S.-focused reports and advocacy analyses (2017–2021 and beyond)

Domestic work that connects religious affiliation to deportation risk tends to be advocacy-driven and more recent than 2021 in the provided set. Faith coalitions and analytical reports released in 2024–2025 estimate large Christian shares among those “vulnerable” to deportation in the U.S., and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and partners published a 2025 report estimating that around 80% of people vulnerable to deportation identify as Christian ^{[2] [3]}. These reports use demographic modeling and household data to estimate vulnerability under specific policy scenarios; they are useful for understanding potential impacts but are not historical deportation-flow studies limited to 2017–2021 ^{[2] [3]}.

5. National human-rights and government sources for case-level evidence

Country-level human-rights reports (for example, the State Department’s country reports) often record specific incidents in which religious belief or activity led to detention, harassment or deportation — offering concrete examples across 2017–2021 but not standardized cross-country counts ^[4]. Administrative enforcement data (ICE, DHS OHSS, OHSS monthly tables) provide removals and enforcement totals for U.S. fiscal years but generally do not publish deportation statistics broken down by deportee religion ^{[10] [11]}. In other words, official enforcement data exist but are limited on the religion dimension in public releases ^{[10] [11]}.

6. How to build a usable research picture (methodological roadmap)

Combine three complementary source types: ^[12] incident-based datasets like Pew’s restrictions/hostilities reports to identify countries and years where religion-related deportations were reported ^{[1] [5]}; ^[13] country human-rights reports (State Dept.) and NGO/advocacy case files for qualitative detail and documented examples ^[4]; ^[14] national enforcement and asylum datasets (DHS/ICE monthly tables, OHSS) for numeric removal totals, then attempt case-matching where possible ^{[10] [11]}. Academic reviews on religion and forced migration provide theory and past findings to interpret such matched data ^{[6] [8]}.

7. Limits, disagreements and next steps

Available sources document incidents and provide reasoned estimates but do not converge on a single, validated dataset that tracks deportations by religious affiliation across 2017–2021. Pew gives reliable country-level incident counts for 2021 ^[1]; State Department reports provide case examples ^[4]; faith-group reports offer vulnerability estimates for the U.S. context but from advocacy perspectives and for later years ^{[2] [3]}. If you want to proceed, I can: (A) assemble the Pew and State Dept. country-year items for 2017–2021 from the provided materials, or (B) draft a plan to FOIA-match removal records to origin-country religion profiles and human-rights incidents to approximate religion-linked deportation flows. Available sources do not mention a single, consolidated study that fully maps deportation flows by religion across 2017–2021.