How many illegal aliens did Trump deport in his first term?
Executive summary
The simplest, widely cited tally is that about 1.5 million people were removed (deported or returned) during Donald Trump’s first four‑year term (2017–2020), a total used by migration experts to compare administrations [1]. That headline number, however, masks sharp differences in counting methods—interior “removals” versus border “returns,” expedited expulsions such as Title 42, and whether voluntary or administrative returns are treated as “deportations” all produce much lower or much higher estimates [2] [3].
1. The common headline: 1.5 million removals across 2017–2020
Scholars at the Migration Policy Institute put the overall figure for the four years of Trump’s first term at roughly 1.5 million removals and returns, the same metric used to compare to later administrations’ totals [1]. That figure aggregates removals ordered by immigration authorities and returns processed at the border, producing a convenient but blunt measure of enforcement during that period [1].
2. Why other tallies look very different: definitions and data categories
Experts warn that “deportation” is not a single, uniform statistic: interior removals (people living in the U.S. who are arrested and formally removed) are tracked separately from border returns and from expedited expulsions such as those under Title 42; including or excluding any of those categories shifts totals dramatically [2] [3]. For example, interior removals under the Trump administration rose relative to the late‑Obama years but, by some measures, never exceeded 100,000 per year—far below the millions suggested by aggregate figures that fold in border returns [2].
3. Expedited removals and Title 42: the data wrinkle that inflates totals
Analysts who add expedited removals and Title 42 expulsions show substantially different annual snapshots: one calculation that includes these categories reports roughly 393,000 deportations/expulsions in 2020 alone when those mechanisms are counted [3]. That illustrates how policy tools that bypass full removal proceedings can cause one year’s totals to spike depending on what is counted as a “deportation” [3].
4. Independent trackers and contested official transparency
Government release practices, selective publicizing of high‑visibility removals, and changes in DHS reporting have made independent verification harder; watchdogs and research groups have documented gaps and warned the administration at times stopped publishing detailed monthly breakdowns, complicating apples‑to‑apples comparisons [4] [5]. Because of that opacity, different organizations relying on ICE/DHS feeds, congressional reports, or their own aggregations produce divergent totals for the same period [4] [5].
5. How to read the numbers: a balanced conclusion
The most defensible direct answer is that roughly 1.5 million people were removed or returned during Trump’s first four years by broad government and migration‑policy tallies—an aggregate number that mixes removals, returns and expedited expulsions [1]. If the inquiry is narrower—asking how many interior removals (formal deportations following immigration proceedings) occurred—the annual totals were much lower, typically under 100,000 per year and therefore far below 1.5 million for the four‑year span [2]. Which figure matters depends on whether the questioner intends the broad category of all removals/returns or only formal interior deportations; sources cited here document both uses and the reasons they diverge [1] [2] [3].