Fact check: Is ICE deporting US citizens in 2025?

1. What the claim actually alleges and why it matters — citizens “being deported” versus detained and stranded

The central claim asks whether ICE is deporting U.S. citizens in 2025; reporting instead documents instances of U.S. citizens being detained, misidentified, or left without care after family members’ removals, rather than clear-cut, documented federal deportations of citizens. Washington Post and other outlets describe more than a dozen citizens “swept up” in enforcement actions and cases where U.S.-born children were left stranded after parents were removed, creating the appearance of deportation consequences even when the citizenship status of the adults or the legal outcome of each case is not uniformly documented ^{[1] [2]}. The distinction matters legally: detention and administrative error are different from a lawful order of deportation applied to a U.S. citizen.

2. Case-level reporting that fuels concern — individual stories and alleged wrongful arrests

Several high-profile case reports describe U.S.-born individuals detained despite presenting citizenship documents, generating civil-rights alarm. A reported Florida case involved a U.S.-born man detained after showing a birth certificate and Social Security card, which advocates say exemplifies racial profiling and the vulnerabilities created by faster, less safeguarded enforcement ^[4]. National reporting catalogs at least a dozen such incidents earlier in the year and more than a hundred citizen children affected by family separations later in 2025, suggesting a pattern of alarming individual harms even when deportation of citizens is not uniformly proven ^{[1] [2]}.

3. Broader patterns from September 2025 reporting — family separations and legal claims

Late-September reporting expands the picture: CNN identified over 100 U.S. citizen children left stranded after enforcement actions this year, while CBS documented at least eight Americans filing joint claims alleging wrongful detention and racial profiling during immigration sweeps ^{[2] [3]}. These investigations underline systemic operational consequences — children losing caretakers, citizens temporarily detained, and multiple lawsuits — even though they stop short of establishing that citizenship has been systematically or lawfully stripped and deported by ICE at scale ^{[2] [3]}.

4. Policy changes and administrative tools — what official documents show and do not show

Government updates in 2025 focused on employment verification (Form I-9/E-Verify), state access to SAVE for voter and status checks, and resumption of personal investigations for naturalization applicants, none of which affirm a policy to deport U.S. citizens; instead these changes reflect expanded verification and enforcement infrastructure that can increase misidentification risks ^{[5] [6] [7]}. The policy documents emphasize verification and naturalization vetting rather than removal of citizens, so administrative expansion appears correlated with increased errors and collateral harms, not explicit deportation directives ^{[5] [6] [7]}.

5. Legal landscape and remedies — lawsuits, advocacy, and rights at stake

Journalistic accounts report lawsuits and class actions from U.S. citizens alleging wrongful detention and racial profiling, reflecting legal avenues being used to challenge enforcement abuses ^[3]. Advocacy groups and attorneys say faster enforcement with fewer safeguards raises the likelihood of erroneous detentions, and plaintiffs are arguing for damages and policy changes. The pattern of litigation indicates courts and civil-rights actors are the main recourse for affected citizens, and those legal processes will produce more definitive factual and legal rulings over time ^{[1] [3]}.

6. What the current evidence does not prove and where reporting is incomplete

Available sources document wrongful detentions and family separations but lack definitive evidence of formal, legally final deportations of U.S. citizens by ICE as a routine or systemic policy in 2025. Reporting documents administrative failures, misidentifications and children left without care, but does not present verified records of ICE completing deportation orders against U.S. citizens; gaps include agency-level removal records, formal removal orders tied specifically to confirmed U.S. citizenship, and follow-up outcomes for many reported cases ^{[1] [2] [8]}.

7. Bottom line: what we can say now and what to watch next

Based on current reporting and government materials through late 2025, ICE enforcement actions have resulted in wrongful detentions and serious family harms involving U.S. citizens, but credible, documented cases of ICE lawfully deporting U.S. citizens remain unestablished in the sources provided. Watch for outcomes of the pending lawsuits and agency disclosures, which will clarify whether reported incidents represent administrative error, failures of verification, or something approaching formal deportation; these legal and FOIA-driven developments will provide the most definitive evidence going forward ^{[3] [1] [7]}.