Trump keeps pushing for mass deportations, but expert says 1 million removals a year is out of reach

During his second term, President Donald Trump has not eased on his campaign promise to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. But despite his efforts, immigration experts say it’s hard to independently verify the scale of deportations, because the administration isn’t releasing monthly or comprehensive data.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement routinely publishes press releases spotlighting  arrests of groups of people and specific cases. It recently said, for example,that officers arrested more than 1,000 immigrants during a 14-day operation in the Washington, D.C., area.

But that’s not enough information to get a full picture of the agency’s enforcement activities, said Austin Kocher, a Center for Latin American and Latino Studies research fellow at American University.

PolitiFact asked ICE for monthly deportation data, but the agency did not provide it. 

In July, ICE said more than 356,000 people had so far been deported in fiscal year 2026, which ends Sept. 30. Nearly 51,000 more were arrested in August, the agency said Sept. 2.

That’s less than half of the 1 million deportations Trump promised would happen in a year.

Independent reviews of available data

In the absence of detailed ICE data, some independent research groups and news outlets have tried to estimate the number of deportations under Trump.

The Deportation Data Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of California, Berkeley, obtained some figures from ICE after filing a public records request. The project found that the agency arrested and detained about 42,000 people in July. That’s the highest monthly total of arrests and detentions during the second Trump administration. 

The Deportation Data Project publishes various sets of numbers, such as how many people ICE detained, released, removed or voluntarily departed. But the data doesn’t show 1 million people have been deported. Some of the deportation information the project requested and received from ICE is contradictory, leading the group to question the accuracy of those numbers, said Phil Neff, the project’s lead data analyst.

The Guardian analyzed the group’s data and found that in July, nearly 34,000 people left the U.S., including people who were removed by the U.S. government and who voluntarily left the country. That’s a record high since the start of the second Trump administration in late January 2025, The Guardian reported. This number is an approximation and could include people initially apprehended by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. 

How Trump is working toward his promise, and the obstacles in his way

The numbers of ICE officers has swelled in recent months. In January, ICE said more than 12,000 officers had joined its ranks and by June, the total number of ICE employees had grown to 29,000, The New York Times reported. That month, Congress gave the Department of Homeland Security roughly $70 billion for ICE and CBP.

Meanwhile, arrests at airports and immigration case check-ins are surging.  Although airport arrests have happened during other administrations, immigration attorneys said they are more common under Trump. ICE is using flight passenger information provided by TSA to locate noncitizens it wants to arrest, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. 

Trump has also changed who can take immigrants into custody, and who can be deported. The administration has authorized local officers to arrest immigrants they suspect of being in the country illegally, a job that’s usually the exclusive purview of federal officers. And it’s made more people eligible for deportation, including immigrants lawfully in the country, Kocher said. A man from Texas was deported to Mexico despite being a U.S. citizen, for example. He only returned to the U.S. after the federal government made an agreement with his lawyer.

People once protected from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program are also being removed. DHS reported in February that ICE arrested more than 260 DACA recipients in 2025 and deported at least 86 of them that year. 

After the Supreme Court allowed DHS to terminate the Temporary Protected Status for Haitians, more than 300,000 Haitians became eligible for deportation, and the agency ended TPS for Ethiopia, Somalia, Syria and other countries. TPS for El Salvador is set to expire Sept. 9.

The U.S. government has deported migrants to countries they have no ties with, as part of agreements with third countries. In February, a judge declared deportations to third countries unlawful. But the next month, an appeals court let the government continue the deportations while it reviews the case. 

On Aug. 24, the administration announced it planned to revoke up to 200,000 nonimmigrant visas (such as tourist and business visas) of people who have applied for or are currently asylum seekers in the U.S. If these visas are revoked, it would enable ICE to arrest some people whose period of authorized admission still has not expired, said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.

Detaining people indefinitely without a final order of removal is one of the administration’s main tactics to increase deportations, Bier said. He said this tactic makes people give up the right to pursue their immigration cases since they don’t want to have to stay in detention for lengthy stays. 

Despite all these efforts, an immigration expert said the administration does not have enough staff to arrest or deport all the people that are targeted for removal.

“There’s no way that the administration can meet the million per year deportations based on existing resources and capacity,” said Tom Wong, an associate professor of political science and founding director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at the University of California, San Diego.

Trump had promised to deport the “worst of the worst,” but at least 51% of the people ICE arrested in July had no criminal convictions or charges, according to PolitiFact’s review of the Deportation Data Project’s numbers.

“So that’s where you get the mothers, fathers, the workers who have been here for 20, 30, 40 years, no criminal conviction, checking in at their ICE appointments, going to their courthouse appearances, and then subsequently being apprehended,” Wong said.

The Trump administration is working toward his mass deportations promise. However, based on available data, Trump still hasn’t hit his goal of 1 million deportations a year. For now, we rate this promise In the Works.