How many people have been deported each year for the past 7 years
Executive summary
Official counts of “deportations” over the last seven years are inconsistent across government releases, independent analyses, and advocacy datasets; the sources provided do not together supply a single, authoritative year‑by‑year table for the past seven years, but they do allow a constrained reconstruction and an explanation of major divergences (DHS/ICE operational definitions, fiscal vs. calendar year, and voluntary departures versus enforced removals) [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. What the user is really asking and why it’s hard to answer
The question requests discrete annual deportation counts, but U.S. agencies and analysts record and publish different metrics—“removals,” “returns,” “voluntary self‑deportations,” and ICE enforcement actions—on different calendars and with data that are revised until a fiscal year is locked, so a simple seven‑row answer risks conflating noncomparable figures [1] [2] [3].
2. The clearest anchor points in the available reporting
ICE and DHS are the primary sources: ICE publishes removals and related tables and warns that numbers fluctuate until the fiscal year is locked [1], and the DHS Office of Homeland Security Statistics (OHSS) is the system of record that standardizes operational reports and warns that events may be counted multiple times where people are encountered repeatedly [2]. Historical Yearbook tables exist back to 2019 for removals/returns [3].
3. What can be stated with some confidence from the provided sources
For FY2019, one public figure cited in secondary reporting is 359,885 removals in 2019 (reported in a compilation of past ICE figures) [5]. For FY2024 and FY2025 the sources diverge: one secondary summary states ICE deported 271,000 in 2024 [5], while DHS press releases in 2025 tout hundreds of thousands of removals—DHS claimed “more than 527,000 deportations” and “more than 2 million illegal aliens have left the U.S.” in 2025 as of October/December statements [6] [7]. Independent analysts offer much lower estimates for FY2025—Migration Policy Institute estimated about 340,000 deportations for FY2025 based on available ICE figures [8].
4. Why DHS/administration tallies and independent estimates differ
DHS press releases have political purposes and sometimes aggregate voluntary departures, returns, and removals into headline tallies, and they promote programs (for example, “self‑deportation” via an app) that the department counts alongside formal removals [7] [6] [9]. Independent groups and media that parse ICE’s operational tables (or FOIA‑provided ICE files used by the Deportation Data Project) separate removals from voluntary departures and exclude duplicate encounters, yielding lower counts [4] [10] [8]. ICE itself warns that its statistics can be revised and that different tables use different units (events vs. unique people), producing apparent discrepancies [1] [2].
5. The practical answer and next best steps for precise year‑by‑year counts
From the documentation provided it is not possible to produce a fully reconciled, authoritative seven‑year list of deportations with exact annual totals; the reporting offers sample year data points (e.g., 2019 ~359,885 in one compilation, 2024 ~271,000 in a secondary summary, and FY2025 estimates ranging from ~340,000 to DHS claims >527,000) but these numbers reflect different counting choices and time frames [5] [6] [8]. To get a defensible, audit‑grade seven‑year table, the only reliable path is to extract “Removals” by fiscal year from ICE’s Removals table and the OHSS yearbook, deduplicate by unique identifiers where possible (the Deportation Data Project’s FOIA release is one source for granular records), and note whether voluntary departures and returns are included or excluded [1] [2] [3] [4].