How many us citizens has trump accidentally deported?
Executive summary
There is no authoritative, public tally of U.S. citizens “accidentally” deported during President Trump’s second term; reporting and court records document multiple wrongful removals but stop short of a comprehensive count, with courts ordering at least four people returned and news organizations identifying several U.S. citizen children among the victims [1] [2] [3].
1. The core problem: no central count, contradictory claims
Federal agencies were not publicly tracking the number of detained or missing U.S. citizens as of 2025, creating a gap between anecdote, litigation and any official statistic — Wikipedia notes the government’s lack of tracking for detained or missing citizens in the period under review [1]; advocacy and media investigations filled the vacuum but reached different figures, and DHS has pushed back on some media claims [4].
2. What independent reporting and courts have documented
Multiple news outlets and court decisions show concrete instances of wrongful removal: Time reported that, in less than six months, courts had directed the administration to bring back at least four people it had deported [2], and PBS and other outlets counted at least seven U.S. citizen children reported deported along with family members [3]. High-profile named cases include Kilmar Ábrego García, whom courts and reporting describe as wrongly deported to El Salvador and whose case drew a federal judge’s critique of the administration’s discovery conduct [5] [6].
3. Scale estimates from prior eras and why they don’t settle the present question
Academic and advocacy work outside the second Trump term has produced wide-ranging estimates — one earlier study estimated more than 20,000 Americans were incorrectly detained or deported between 2003 and 2011, and the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse identified thousands of citizens flagged as deportable between 2002 and 2017 — but these older figures cannot be transposed directly onto the 2025–2026 enforcement surge without new, systematic data [1].
4. The administration’s posture and pushback on reporting
The Trump administration has defended its removals and disputed some media narratives; DHS published a post arguing that media claims that ICE was deporting U.S. citizen children were “FALSE” and that specific cases did not involve citizens, even as courts and lawyers pursued litigation alleging wrongful removals [4]. That institutional denial sits alongside litigation in federal court and reporting that details mistakes and rulings ordering returns, underscoring a contested factual record [5] [2].
5. Bottom line: a minimum number and an open question
Based on the supplied reporting, the defensible, evidence-based answer is that at least several U.S. citizens were wrongly deported under the administration — courts ordered the return of at least four people [2], and journalists and attorneys identified at least seven U.S. citizen children among deported family members [3] — but there is no publicly released, comprehensive count; the true number could be higher and remains subject to discovery, litigation outcomes and whether DHS or other agencies produce a transparent inventory [1] [5].