Deportations rise under Trump but miss 1 million target, report shows

A recent report by the Migration Policy Institute shows that deportations under President Donald Trump's administration increased to about 660,000 in the last year, marking a 26% rise from the average yearly deportations during President Joe Biden's term from 2021 to 2024, WTOP reported.

Despite this increase, the number falls short of the Trump administration's promise to deport 1 million people annually, a goal set when Congress allocated billions for immigration enforcement, according to the report based on publicly available data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.

The report states that the Department of Homeland Security carried out approximately 980,000 deportations during the first 18 months of Trump's second administration, but the numbers remain well below the 1.86 million deportations recorded in 2000 under President Bill Clinton.

Challenges to meeting the deportation targets include the increasing diversity of migrants' countries of origin, which complicates deportation processes, and significant backlogs in immigration courts that decide removal cases, the report notes.

The Trump administration pushed through restrictions on both legal and illegal immigration and launched high-profile arrest operations in its bid to force migrants out.