Hi ow many deportations did Trump do his first term as president and how many to date has he done in his second term
Executive summary
Donald Trump’s first presidential term oversaw hundreds of thousands of formal removals (deportations) from the United States each year, with publicly reported annual totals ranging from roughly 225,000 in FY2017 to about 122,000 in 2020, but a single authoritative, consolidated total for 2017–2020 is not provided in the available reporting [1] [2]. For Trump’s second term, reported figures diverge sharply: the administration and DHS have released large, sometimes promotional, tallies that mix removals and “self-deportations,” independent analyses and FOIA-derived datasets point to much smaller removal counts (for example, roughly 128,000 deportations in the first half of FY2025), and other outlets cite interim ICE numbers like 28,319 removals in the first seven weeks—leaving a wide, unresolved range for “to date” totals [3] [4] [5] [6].
1. What “deportations” means and why totals disagree
Different sources count different things: DHS and White House statements have sometimes combined formal removals, CBP expulsions at the border, and people who “self-deported” (left voluntarily under pressure), producing headline-grabbing aggregates; independent trackers and FOIA-based datasets aim to isolate ICE removals from the interior, which are a narrower category and typically produce smaller numbers [3] [4] [7].
2. The first term (2017–2020): solid signals, not a single tally
Publicly reported annual removal data show Trump’s first year with roughly 225,000 removals (FY2017) and a fall to about 122,000 removals in 2020—trends explained in reporting as pandemic effects and shifting enforcement priorities—so the first term clearly produced hundreds of thousands of removals overall, but the sources given do not publish a single consolidated total for all four fiscal years under Trump in one place for direct citation here [1] [2].
3. The second term (starting January 20, 2025): competing narratives and numbers
The second-term picture is conflicted: the administration and DHS released sweeping tallies (for example, a September 2025 DHS claim that “2 million illegal aliens have been removed or self-deported in less than 250 days,” including a breakdown that purportedly counted more than 400,000 deportations) that combine removals and voluntary departures and serve a clear political message about enforcement success [3]. Independent analysts and FOIA-sourced work paint a different magnitude: Factchequeado’s analysis of ICE-provided data found about 128,039 deportations between January and June 2025 (the first six months of FY2025), and Newsweek reported ICE saying 28,319 interior removals between January 20 and March 11, 2025—figures that do not align with DHS’s broader promotional totals and illustrate the gap between internal removal counts and public messaging [4] [5].
4. Why reconciliation is difficult and what the best reading is
Reconciling these totals is made difficult by inconsistent public reporting practices, differences between CBP expulsions, ICE interior removals, and voluntary departures, and by the administration’s use of aggregated “removed or self-deported” metrics for political effect [3] [8]. The most reliable independent indicators available to date point to hundreds of thousands of formal removals during Trump’s first term (annual figures provided above) and to a substantial—but contested—number of removals in the early months of his second term, with FOIA/independent counts clustering in the low hundreds of thousands for early 2025 while administration claims are much higher [1] [4] [6].
5. Takeaway and limits of available reporting
The clearest, supportable conclusions from the sources: Trump’s first term produced hundreds of thousands of deportations annually (notably ~225,000 in FY2017 and ~122,000 in 2020) though an exact four‑year aggregate is not provided in the cited pieces; for the second term there is no single, transparently audited “to date” total—administration and DHS tallies that mix removals and self-deportations should be treated as political high‑side counts, while FOIA and media reporting indicate substantially lower ICE interior-removal numbers through mid‑2025 [1] [3] [4] [5]. Where sources disagree, that disagreement is itself the news: official aggregated claims serve a clear enforcement narrative, independent datasets show more modest removal counts, and DHS/ICE public transparency remains insufficient to present an unambiguous, single-number answer from the material provided [8] [4].