Fact check: How many illegal immigrants did Donald trump deport or remove in his first term?

1. Summary of the results

Based on the available analyses, there is limited and conflicting information about deportation numbers during Trump's first presidential term (2017-2021). The most specific figure comes from one source reporting that around 1.5 million deportations were carried out during Trump's first term, according to figures by the Migration Policy Institute ^[1].

However, most sources focus on Trump's second term rather than his first term. Multiple sources report that during the first 100 days of Trump's second term, ICE removed 65,682 aliens ^[2], with 66,463 illegal aliens arrested during this same period ^[2]. One source notes that the Trump administration claimed to have deported over 135,000 people in its first 100 days of the second term, but actual numbers show only around 72,000 removals ^[3].

2. Missing context/alternative viewpoints

The original question lacks several important contextual elements that emerge from the analyses:

• Comparison to other administrations: One source reveals that Trump's second-term removal rate of 72,000 in 100 days is "one percent below the daily average number of removals during the Biden administration" ^[3], suggesting deportation numbers may not be as dramatically different between administrations as political rhetoric suggests.
• Gap between promises and reality: Sources indicate Trump's administration set a goal of deporting 1 million people annually but current pace suggests they will fall short of this goal, with an estimated 500,000 deportations for the year ^[4]. This highlights the difference between campaign promises and operational capacity.
• Resource and legal constraints: The analyses reveal that the administration faces "challenges in achieving its deportation goals due to limited resources and legal constraints" ^[5], providing important context about the practical limitations of mass deportation policies.
• Methodology differences: There appears to be confusion between "removals" and "deportations" in the data, and between arrests and actual deportations, which could significantly affect accurate counting.

3. Potential misinformation/bias in the original statement

The original question itself is neutral and factual in nature, simply asking for deportation statistics. However, the lack of available comprehensive data on Trump's first term creates an information vacuum that could be filled with:

• Inflated claims: One source shows the Trump administration claimed higher deportation numbers ^{[6] [7]} than actual figures ^{[8] [7] [3]}, indicating a pattern of potentially exaggerated official statistics.
• Political organizations benefit from narrative control: Immigration advocacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union ^[9] and the American Immigration Council ^[4] have institutional interests in highlighting concerns about Trump's immigration policies, while the Trump administration benefits from portraying enforcement as more successful than data suggests.
• Selective timeframe focus: Most available analyses focus on Trump's second term rather than his first, which could lead to conflation of different time periods and inaccurate historical claims about his first-term performance.

The question reveals a significant data gap in publicly available comprehensive statistics for Trump's first presidential term, making it difficult to provide a definitive answer without more thorough historical documentation.