Have there been verified cases or legal findings of U.S. citizens mistakenly deported by federal immigration authorities in the past decade?

1. What the federal watchdog found: GAO’s sober tally

In a formal audit the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that ICE and CBP encounter people who claim U.S. citizenship and that agency data show arrests, detentions and removals involving individuals who were later identified as U.S. citizens; GAO’s review reported that ICE issued detainers for at least 895 potential U.S. citizens from fiscal year 2015 through mid‑2020 and that available agency records indicated arrests and even removals of some who later claimed citizenship, while also faulting ICE for inconsistent guidance and inadequate tracking that make a full accounting difficult ^[1].

2. Numbers reported and the headline figure: “up to 70”

Advocates and follow‑up reporting summarized GAO’s findings as indicating that as many as 70 people whom ICE later identified as likely U.S. citizens were removed between 2015 and 2020; those figures come from the GAO dataset and subsequent analysis by immigrant‑rights organizations and the American Immigration Council that highlighted the possibility of dozens of mistaken deportations in that window ^{[2] [1]}.

3. Individual documented cases and legal entanglements

Beyond aggregate numbers, high‑profile individual cases have been documented: for example, Davino Watson—described in reporting as a U.S. citizen from New York—was held in an Alabama detention center for three years before release, and courts have sometimes denied compensation for victims on statutory grounds even where detention was later acknowledged as improper; Congress and civil‑rights groups have pressed investigations and litigation over several family removals and child deportations that raised claims of mistaken removal or inadequate process ^{[2] [4] [5]}.

4. Federal denials, disputes and dropped lawsuits — the contested record

The Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly pushed back on some media accounts, issuing statements that DHS does not deport U.S. citizens and highlighting operational safeguards, and DHS announced at least one instance where it said an ACLU‑supported lawsuit alleging a citizen’s deportation was dropped because the underlying claim was false; these denials underscore that specific allegations are often disputed and that some high‑profile claims have been litigated, recharacterized or withdrawn ^{[3] [6]}.

5. Why the picture remains partial: data gaps and political agendas

GAO explicitly pointed to weaknesses in ICE record‑keeping and inconsistent training and guidance for officers handling citizenship claims, which helps explain why precise counts are elusive and why advocacy groups and lawmakers reach different conclusions; at the same time, political actors on all sides have incentives to amplify either systemic failure or exceptional circumstance—advocates use GAO’s findings to demand reforms, while DHS emphasizes denials and case‑by‑case explanations—so readers must weigh both the watchdog’s data gaps and the administration’s rebuttals ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

6. Bottom line — verified cases exist but scope is debated

The government‑level account from GAO and multiple documented individual incidents make clear that U.S. citizens have, in the past decade, been mistakenly detained and that some removals are alleged and recorded in agency data; however, DHS disputes some high‑profile accounts and agency data are incomplete, so while verification exists for individual wrongful detentions and some removals (per GAO and court reporting), the total number and full circumstances remain disputed and require better federal tracking and transparent review ^{[1] [2] [3]}.