Trump's 18-Month Deportation Total Reaches 980,000 — Mostly Non-Criminals

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Nearly 18 months into President Donald Trump's second term, a comprehensive new analysis places the total number of people removed from the United States at approximately 980,000 — a figure that reflects a modern-era enforcement pace without precedent but still falls short of the White House's publicly stated goal of one million deportations per year. The report, released October 22 by the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute (MPI), covers the period from Inauguration Day on January 20, 2025, through July 31, 2026, and draws on publicly available federal data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

A Government Data Gap Forces Independent Research

The MPI report arrives in an unusual information environment. The Department of Homeland Security stopped releasing detailed monthly enforcement data in January 2025, ending a practice that had sustained public transparency under prior administrations. To bridge that gap, MPI author Marc Rosenblum and his team analyzed publicly available agency records to reconstruct the full scope of an enforcement effort the government itself no longer voluntarily documents.

The counts that have emerged since the data pullback diverge depending on the source. DHS and White House officials have publicly cited removal figures ranging from 675,000 to well above one million, but those tallies routinely blend formal deportations with voluntary departures and self-deportations that are not classified as government-executed removals. According to Reuters, MPI's 980,000 figure is consistent with certain DHS statements but sits well below what White House communications have claimed at other moments — a gap driven, in large part, by how "deportation" is defined.

The Border Still Drives Two-Thirds of All Deportations

Despite repeated administration messaging centered on a sweeping interior crackdown, roughly 69% of all deportations between January 2025 and July 2026 involved people initially encountered at or near the southern border, according to MPI. Of that share, approximately 340,000 were turned around directly by CBP agents, while another 340,000 were later processed by ICE following an initial border arrest.

This dynamic persists even as illegal crossings have dropped to generational lows. CBP's official June 2026 data shows that Border Patrol apprehensions along the Southwest border that month totaled approximately 9,848 — 94% below the Biden administration's monthly average and 96% below the Biden-era peak recorded in December 2023. The apparent paradox — elevated deportation counts alongside a near-empty border — reflects how enforcement resources have been redirected away from recent arrivals and redeployed toward people who have lived inside the country for months or years.

Interior Raids Accelerate, Reaching Established Communities

The remaining 31% of deportations — roughly 300,000 people — were arrested inside the United States, away from any port of entry or border crossing. MPI's data reveals a sharply accelerating trend: interior arrests accounted for 28% of deportations during fiscal year 2025, climbed to 34% in the first half of 2026, and reached 39% by July 2026. Monthly deportations tied to interior enforcement rose from roughly 8,000 during the first three months of the administration to approximately 19,000 between May and July 2026 — more than doubling in pace over that span.

Excluding CBP border returns, 61% of people deported by ICE — around 390,000 individuals — had lived in the United States for at least two years, and approximately 15%, or 90,000 people, had been established in American communities for a decade or more. Operations in cities including Chicago and Minneapolis have put this long-settled population at the center of a national debate, drawing praise from enforcement advocates and fierce criticism from immigrant rights organizations.

The Criminal Conviction Contradiction

The administration has consistently framed its deportation campaign as targeting the most dangerous people in the country — what officials have called "the worst of the worst." The MPI findings complicate that framing significantly. Among deportees who had lived in the U.S. for at least two years, 71% — or approximately 280,000 people — had no criminal conviction on record. Among those with a decade or more of U.S. residence, roughly 61%, or about 57,000 individuals, were also free of any criminal history.

Across all 980,000 deportations, only about 20% — or 190,000 people — had a criminal conviction. A September 2026 PolitiFact review of data compiled by the Deportation Data Project found that at least 51% of people ICE arrested in July 2026 had neither criminal charges nor convictions — the highest such share since the administration took office. Those findings broadly align with admissions from the administration's own border czar: in a nationally televised CNN interview, Tom Homan acknowledged that roughly 40% of ICE arrests involve people with no criminal history, adding — in his own words — "I think that's a good percentage."

One Million a Year: Still Out of Reach

Calculated along fiscal year lines, MPI estimates deportations ran to approximately 620,000 in fiscal 2025 and projects around 660,000 in fiscal 2026 — a pace that is 26% above the annual average recorded under President Biden, but still well below the one million per year benchmark Trump repeatedly pledged during his 2024 campaign.

For historical perspective, the projected 660,000 for FY2026 also falls short of the 1.86 million deportations the United States recorded in fiscal year 2000 under President Bill Clinton — a total that, like the MPI count, includes both formal removals and enforcement returns. The current pace, while historically elevated by the standards of the past two decades, does not represent the absolute peak in American deportation history. Whether this administration can close the gap between its current trajectory and its declared million-per-year target before the term ends remains, for now, an open question.

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