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The report notes that 71% of deportees with at least two years of residence (280,000) had never been convicted of a crime. The government of Donald Trump has deported some 980,000 people since the beginning of his second term, according to a report by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) that documents the consequences of his hard-line immigration policy, at a time when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is not publishing official figures.
The analysis covers the period from January 20, the day Trump took office, to July 31, 2026, and is based on public data obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, as the DHS stopped releasing such statistics in January 2025.
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Trump arrived at the White House with the promise of carrying out "the largest deportation operation" in the country's history and with the goal of one million deportations per year.
According to the report, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) together completed some 980,000 deportations.
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If calculated by fiscal year (October to September), the pace is equivalent to some 620,000 deportations in 2025 and some 660,000 in 2026, according to the report.
Although border crossings with Mexico are at historic lows, 69% of deportations corresponded to people intercepted at the border, the report indicates: some 340,000 were returned directly by the CBP and another 340,000 were detained at the border and deported by ICE after being processed within the country.
The remaining 31%, some 300,000, were immigrants arrested in the interior of the United States—that is, according to the MPI, people who had likely been living in American communities for years.
Indeed, arrests in the interior of the country, which the Trump administration has publicized through social media videos and large operations in cities like Chicago or Minneapolis, went from representing 28% of deportations in 2025 to 34% in the first half of 2026 and 39% in July, and their monthly average rose from 8,000 in the first three months of the term to 19,000 between May and July 2026.
Excluding border returns by the CBP, 61% of people deported by ICE (390,000) had been in the country for at least two years and 15% (90,000) for ten years or more, the study details.
Regarding criminal records, the report points out that 71% of deportees with at least two years of residence (280,000) had never been convicted of a crime, and that among those who had been in the country for a decade or more, 61% (57,000) also had no convictions.
This contradicts the administration's message, which has insisted that the priority is to deport people with criminal records, whom it calls "the worst of the worst."
In total, according to the MPI, only 20% (190,000) of the 980,000 deportations affected people convicted of a crime. EFE
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