Fact check: How many US citizens have been deported by ICE in 2024?

1. Claim Clash: Officials Say “ICE Does Not Deport Citizens,” Reporters Say People Were Removed

Federal statements from the Department of Homeland Security and ICE repeatedly assert that ICE does not arrest or deport U.S. citizens, framing any encounters as mistakes or criminal arrests unrelated to immigration removals ^{[1] [2]}. These statements emphasize formal agency policy and procedures designed to prevent deportation of nationals. The public messaging aims to correct media reports and reassure that routine enforcement actions target noncitizens, with DHS issuing explicit debunking of New York Times reporting to that effect ^[1]. This is a clear institutional posture asserting that official deportations of citizens are not part of ICE operations.

2. Investigations Tell a Different Story: Hundreds Held, Dozens Wrongfully Removed

Investigative outlets report more than 170 U.S. citizens held by immigration agents, including children and medically vulnerable people, with multiple accounts of extended detention without legal counsel or family notification ^{[3] [5]}. ProPublica and other reporters compiled case files showing systemic failures in identification practices and the potential for wrongful removals. These investigations do not always translate to a definitive count of “deported” citizens in 2024, but they document detentions and at least some wrongful removals that contradict the categorical claim that citizens are never deported ^{[3] [4]}.

3. Numbers vs. Narrative: ICE Deportation Totals Don’t Show Citizen Removals

ICE’s reported removal numbers for fiscal year 2024 show a jump to a 10-year high of over 271,000 deportations, a statistic that encompasses noncitizen removals and excludes Border Patrol returns in many tallies, but these agency aggregate counts do not identify removals of U.S. citizens ^[6]. Because ICE public statistics do not separately enumerate citizen removals and Border Patrol returns are tracked differently, the official datasets alone cannot confirm or deny isolated wrongful deportations. This data gap allows both the agency’s policy claim and investigative reports of errors to exist simultaneously without a single reconciliatory figure ^[6].

4. Case Studies: Individual Wrongful Deportations Raise Questions

Documented individual cases — such as Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s wrongful deportation to El Salvador and other long-running stories — show how identification failures, record errors, and legal missteps can produce deportations of people later established to be U.S. citizens ^{[4] [5]}. These cases are concrete evidence of systemic vulnerabilities in enforcement procedures. While they do not produce a national tally for 2024, they demonstrate that isolated but consequential errors have occurred, and they have prompted legal challenges and calls for auditing ICE practices ^[4].

5. Why Official Denials and Investigative Findings Diverge

The divergence stems from differences in definitions, data collection, and institutional incentives: DHS/ICE cite formal policy and internal protocols meant to prevent citizen removals, while journalists compile individual case files and court records showing instances where those protections failed ^{[1] [2] [5]}. Agencies emphasize that arrests of citizens are due to obstruction or assault rather than immigration enforcement, while reporters focus on cases where citizenship claims were overlooked or records incorrectly flagged individuals as removable. Both perspectives are factual within their respective scopes.

6. What the Available Evidence Does and Doesn’t Prove

Available evidence proves that U.S. citizens have been detained by immigration agents in significant numbers and that wrongful deportations have occurred historically, but it does not produce a verified, authoritative count of how many U.S. citizens were deported by ICE specifically in 2024 ^{[3] [6] [5]}. Agency statistics for ICE removals omit necessary disaggregation, and public corrections by DHS do not fully address the investigative dossiers compiled by news organizations. The absence of a reconciled government dataset means the precise 2024 deportation count for citizens remains unverified.

7. Where to Watch Next: Records, Audits, and Legal Remedies

Addressing the gap requires transparent, disaggregated government reporting, independent audits, and systemic fixes to identification and record-matching processes; legal challenges and congressional oversight may force more complete disclosure. Investigative outlets have provided case compilations that can inform oversight, while DHS pronouncements indicate institutional resistance to accepting a broad pattern of citizen removals without clearer proof ^{[1] [5]}. For a definitive number, congressional inquiries or an inspector general audit releasing breakdowns of removals and detentions by citizenship status would be decisive.

8. Bottom Line for Readers Seeking a Number

There is no authoritative, publicly released figure confirming how many U.S. citizens ICE deported in 2024: official agency positions deny systematic citizen deportations, while investigative reporting documents at least 170 detentions and multiple wrongful removal cases, demonstrating concrete instances of harm but not a reconciled national total ^{[3] [1] [6]}. Readers should treat both the DHS/ICE denials and investigative findings as pieces of a larger factual puzzle that remains unresolved until transparent, disaggregated data or audit findings are published.