Trump on Pace to Deport more than Obama

St. Croix Times Staff

Handout picture released by Guatemalan Migration Institute shows Guatemalan migrants descending from an US military plane after being deported from US at the Guatemalan Air Force Base in Guatemala City on January 24, 2025. © Guatemalan Migration Institute via AFP

Washington, D.C. - ICE is now deporting nearly 1,300 people a day, according to the latest agency data. If sustained over 12 months, it would break President Obama’s modern day deportation record, set in 2012 of nearly 420,000 deportations. 

The data released recently shows that ICE has formally removed 246,287 people this year up to the end of July, which would put it on pace to equal nearly 470,000 removals across a full year. 

The Trump Administration pace still falls far short of the one million deportations per year some officials have suggested as their formal goal. 

However, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are claiming their book-ins, or arrests, have currently dropped below 900 a day, indicating the agency is having trouble making headway on President Trump’s goal of booting out the millions who arrived during the Biden border chaos. 

One reason removals aren’t higher is that there just aren’t as many new arrivals coming across the border given the increased border patrols and higher levels of scrutiny placed on illegal immigrants trying to enter the country. Also, in the interior of the country, ICE is finding fewer new targets, and when it does try to expand its aperture it is coming up against federal court resistance.

A federal judge in Los Angeles ruled last month that ICE agents made unconstitutional sweeps apparently to try to boost numbers in June. Another federal judge in Washington ruled that ICE cannot use a speedy deportation tool known as “expedited removal” on the migrants that  President Biden allowed into the country on a “parole” basis.

ICE reported it had 56,945 people in detention as of the end of July. That’s well below the Biden era total when ICE regularly held between 30,000 to 40,000 people in detention.

President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill budget law includes money to dramatically expand detention and deportation capacity, so the numbers could increase in the coming months as ICE ramps up their activities. 

Very few are opposed to criminals being picked up off the streets and thrown out of the country, even if the procedures to do so are sometimes harsh. The legal problem and ethical dilemma comes into play when people are targeted for political and personal reasons and are unjustly swept away as if their Constitutional rights have no meaning. That type of chicanery doesn’t just border on tyranny, it is tyranny.