How many immigrants were deported under Trump, how many are expulsions
Executive summary
Public tallies of deportations under President Trump vary widely because agencies, reporting projects and news outlets count different actions — "removals" by ICE, "enforcement returns" by CBP, voluntary self-deports, and Title 42-style "expulsions" are often lumped together or separated in different tallies — producing estimates that range from roughly 290,000 documented ICE removals to media tallies of roughly 540,000 actions described as deportations and government claims of several hundred thousand removals plus millions of voluntary departures [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. The basic split: removals vs expulsions and why it matters
Official statistics and independent trackers use different legal definitions: ICE "removals" are formal deportations, CBP "enforcement returns" and "expulsions" (including Title 42-era expulsions) are administrative returns that often occur at or near the border, and voluntary self-deports or program-driven departures are neither formal removals nor forcible expulsions but are sometimes tallied in headline totals — the New York Times’ compilation that counts removals, enforcement returns and expulsions puts the total since Mr. Trump took office at about 540,000, explicitly distinguishing those categories and noting that administrative returns and Title 42 expulsions have been counted as repatriations rather than removals [2].
2. Independent trackers and ICE’s narrower count: lower figures
TRAC, which relies on ICE-published removal data and other public records, reports a much smaller number of documented ICE removals during the Trump administration — citing an aggregate of about 290,603 reported removals when adding FY2025 and FY2026 figures and noting roughly 234,211 removals after Trump assumed office in one calculation — a gap that spotlights how many "deportation" claims depend on which dataset is selected [1].
3. DHS and White House tallies: broad counts and voluntary departures
DHS and White House statements produced much larger headline numbers that mix deportations with voluntary self-deportations and program-driven returns: DHS press releases claimed more than 527,000 removals in a given period and, separately, boasted that over 2 million people had left the U.S. including 1.6–1.9 million labeled as voluntary self-deports, producing administration totals of millions "removed or self-deported" in less than a year [3] [5] [4]. Those releases are explicit about including voluntary departures and rely on CBP/ICE program tallies such as the "CBP Home" app returns [4] [3].
4. Media syntheses and the headline 540,000 figure
The New York Times assembled agency-provided figures and considered removals, enforcement returns and expulsions together to arrive at a 540,000 total since Mr. Trump took office, and it cautioned that the Department of Homeland Security’s statistics division had stopped publishing the once-routine detailed breakdowns, complicating external verification [2]. Time and Reuters reported intermediate figures — Time noted the administration claimed more than 139,000 deportations by end of April and tracked signs of a rising pace [6], while Reuters cited administration claims of roughly 200,000 deportations in a four‑month span and observed that overall numbers lagged some prior periods and were hard to validate because DHS curtailed detailed reporting [7].
5. The role of expulsions (Title 42 and similar authorities)
Expulsions — administrative removals that often occur at the border under health or other authorities (the pandemic-era Title 42 expulsions are the most prominent example) — were a dominant component of mass repatriation totals in the recent period under prior administrations and are often counted differently by different outlets; migration-policy analysis underscores that hundreds of thousands to millions of expulsions occurred under Title 42 in prior years, and journalists and researchers caution that counting those alongside interior ICE removals conflates distinct legal processes [8]. The New York Times’ methodology explicitly included expulsions in its 540,000 figure while other trackers restrict the term "deportation" to ICE removals [2] [1].
6. Bottom line and reporting limitations
There is no single uncontested number: narrow measures of ICE removals since Trump’s return produce figures in the low hundreds of thousands (TRAC’s ~290,000), broader tallies that add CBP returns and expulsions reach roughly 540,000 in media compilations [1] [2], and DHS and White House statements have presented even larger aggregates by including voluntary self-deports and programmatic returns that push combined "left the U.S." totals into the millions [3] [4]. Because DHS curtailed detailed public statistical publications and different actors define "deportation" differently, readers must treat any single headline as a partial view and consult the underlying breakdown (removals vs enforcement returns vs expulsions vs voluntary departures) to understand what is actually being counted [2] [1].