How many legal immigrants were deported during the Trump administration compared to previous administrations?
Executive summary
Official tallies and independent trackers show large numbers of removals since President Trump returned to office, but available reporting does not provide a clean, verifiable count of how many people who held lawful immigration statuses were formally deported; the Department of Homeland Security has publicly touted six‑hundred‑thousand‑plus removals, independent researchers report substantially lower counts for measured periods, and watchdogs warn DHS’s headline figures conflate different categories [1] [2] [3].
1. What the administration is claiming and why those claims matter
The Department of Homeland Security issued public statements asserting more than 600,000 removals since the administration began and repeatedly highlighted milestones like “2 million removed or self‑deported” to signal a major enforcement victory [1] [4] [5], but DHS has not published the detailed, routine monthly breakdowns it once provided, which makes independent verification difficult and opens those headline claims to scrutiny [3] [1].
2. What independent counts and journalists find
Investigative reporting and FOIA‑based trackers provide lower—and more nuanced—estimates: the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse estimated roughly 234,000 deportations from January through September 2025 tied to ICE arrests [2], and The New York Times reported overall removal totals on the order of hundreds of thousands in recent years—590,000 in 2023 and 650,000 in 2024—while noting counting is complicated by differing definitions and data gaps [3].
3. Legal status is the key ambiguity — “legal immigrants” vs. removable noncitizens
A central reason the question cannot be answered with a single definitive number is that the administration has used policy levers that change people’s legal exposure: it has revoked Temporary Protected Status for nearly a million people and rescinded hundreds of thousands of parole grants, acts that convert previously authorized residents into removable noncitizens without any single published tally distinguishing removals of people who had held lawful statuses versus removals of unauthorized border crossers [6].
4. Enforcement patterns: more interior removals, faster processing
Independent analyses find a sharp shift in how removals are carried out: deportations following ICE arrests in the interior rose roughly 4.6‑fold in the first nine months compared with the prior period, release rates dropped and the share deported quickly after detention rose from 55% to 69%—changes that reflect process and targeting shifts even if they do not isolate “legal” status in the counts [7].
5. How this compares to previous administrations
Historically, removals have varied by year—CBP and ICE together recorded roughly 337,000 removals in fiscal 2018 and there were sustained periods during the Obama years (2012–2014) with more than 400,000 removals per year [8]; Biden‑era totals reached higher headline numbers (reported 590,000 in 2023 and 650,000 in 2024) but were tracked with more transparent data releases than the current administration has provided [3]. Analysts tracking day‑to‑day removals conclude that despite the rhetoric, daily removals under Trump have in some assessments not exceeded Biden’s peaks and that public relations claims have at times outpaced verifiable removals [9] [10].
6. The competing narratives and the political incentives
The administration’s communications emphasize large counts to demonstrate policy impact and deter migration [5] [4], while researchers and watchdogs caution those aggregates often mix forced removals, voluntary departures, border repatriations and removals of people whose legal protections were recently ended—categories that have different legal and humanitarian implications and that obscure how many people with previously lawful status were forcibly removed [1] [11] [6].
7. Bottom line and limits of the public record
Available sources collectively show hundreds of thousands of removals since Trump took office and clear changes in enforcement practice, but do not provide a reliable, single‑number answer to “how many legal immigrants were deported” because DHS has not published the granular breakdown needed and independent trackers report divergent counts for overlapping time windows; therefore the most accurate statement is that removals rose in profile and scope and that policy actions stripped protection from nearly a million people—creating conditions for many formerly lawful residents to become removable—while independent counts of documented deportations are substantially lower than the administration’s headline totals [1] [7] [6] [2].