Who could be targeted in Trump’s mass deportation effort
Trump mass deportations Immigration
Deportation at ‘light speed’: How Trump’s crackdown could unfold
President-elect Donald Trump intends to launch a “light speed” mass deportation campaign as soon as he “puts his hand on that Bible and takes the oath of office,” top aide Stephen Miller has boasted.
While U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has long prioritized immigrants with criminal records, there are other subgroups that could be at a higher risk of deportation. They include millions of newcomers who arrived during the record border influx under President Joe Biden, as well as those who have exhausted their legal appeals but haven’t left the United States.
Others, including “dreamers” allowed to stay under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, are likely to remain a lower priority.
Trump will face considerable logistical and financial hurdles if he attempts to sharply increase the number of people arrested, jailed and removed from the country by ICE. So, what would a mass deportation campaign really look like? Does Trump have the means and the personnel to pull it off?
11 million people deportable in the U.S.
The universe of potential deportees — immigrants living in the United States without legal status — is about 11 million, according to a 2024 report by the Office of Homeland Security. Many immigration analysts believe that figure is now higher due to record border crossings during Biden’s term.
Each figure represents 10,000 people
Trump set ambitious deportation goals as he prepared to take office in 2017, pledging to quickly remove 2 million to 3 million people. He ended up deporting about 1.5 million people over four years.
In recent interviews, Trump has said he would like to deport everyone living illegally in the United States, though he did not set a numerical target. His threats have set immigrant communities on edge and raised worries among businesses about the potential impact to the U.S. labor force and wider economy.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported the highest number of people in a decade during fiscal 2024, the last full fiscal year of Biden’s term.
The majority were recent border crossers rather than immigrants taken into custody by ICE in U.S. communities. The agency’s busiest year was 2012, during the Obama administration, when ICE deported 409,000 people.
Immigrants with criminal records will be Trump’s first priority, his top aides say.
Step 1. A graphic showing 662,566 noncitizens with criminal histories on its caseload
662,566
noncitizens with criminal histories on ICE’s caseload
Each figure represents 10,000 people
Step 2. A graphic showing 662,566 noncitizens with criminal histories on its caseload
662,566
noncitizens with criminal histories on ICE’s caseload
ICE told Congress that as of July 21 there were more than 650,000 noncitizens with criminal histories on the agency’s caseload.
Those in federal or state prison will face deportation once their criminal sentences are complete. The total includes 435,719 convicted criminals.
Of that total, there are also 226,847 noncitizens with pending charges. Traffic offenses (including drunken driving), drug crimes and immigration violations are the leading categories, court data shows.
Tom Homan, the former ICE acting director whom Trump has named “border czar,” said the new administration will also prioritize the 1.4 million immigrants who have received deportation orders after failing to qualify for legal status in the United States.
The latest ICE data shows nearly half are ineligible to be sent home. Some have been granted a reprieve or deferral by ICE because their home countries won’t take them back or they are likely to face persecution. Others have been allowed to remain at the discretion of a judge.
Step 1.
There are 8 million people on ICE’s ‘non detained docket’
Each figure represents 10,000 people
Step 2.
There are 8 million people on ICE’s ‘non detained docket’
Some of their cases account for the nearly 8 million now on ICE’s “non-detained docket” — immigrants who are potentially eligible for deportation and remain in some stage of court proceedings.
A new analysis by the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute estimates that as of July 5.8 million migrants who entered the United States during Biden’s term remain in the country with a pending immigration claim or a provisional status, such as humanitarian parole, that Trump could revoke once he takes office.
More than 1 million of these immigrants may be awaiting asylum hearings that aren’t scheduled for several more years due to historic backlogs. Those immigrants and others are required to periodically report to ICE or may be subject to electronic monitoring requirements.
Because the claims of these 8 million people on ICE’s “non-detained docket” are pending, they are not easy for ICE to deport. But they are relatively easy to find: The agency has their names, addresses, phone numbers and, in many cases, biometric data such as fingerprints.
During Trump’s first term, some immigrants dutifully reported to their ICE check-ins, only to be detained and scheduled for deportation. It’s an enforcement tactic that can snare a lot of potential deportees in the short term, but ICE officials say voluntary compliance with the check-in process tends to fall off as fears of deportation rise.
There are other subgroups of potential deportees Trump could target. They include more than 1 million immigrants with temporary protected status who have been allowed to live and work in the United States because their countries are too dangerous or chaotic to take them back. On Jan. 9, the Biden administration announced an 18-month extension for Venezuela, El Salvador, Ukraine and Sudan, four nations that account for about 80 percent of all temporary protected status holders. If Trump declines to renew the protections when the extension expires, some of those immigrants will lose their legal status and would be subject to arrest.
Migrants by process
More than 1.1 million potential deportees have
some type of temporary protected status
1,100,000
have a temporary protected status (TPS)
860,000
have been processed via CBP One App
535,000
are under the Deferred Action
for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program
531,600
have a Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan
and Venezuelan (CHNV) parole
214,800
Uniting for Ukraine
178,800
deferred action: U Visa
80,000
deferred action: Special
Immigrant Juveniles
75,000
Under the Operation Allies
Welcome plan
58,800
Under Family Reunification Parole for
Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador,
Guatemala, Haiti, and Honduras
Other countries with TPS designations include Afghanistan, Burma (also known as Myanmar), Cameroon, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen, though only migrants who meet specific parameters are eligible. Nearly 600,000 Venezuelans are eligible for TPS, by far the largest nationality.
Map showing deportable people by country
Countries such as Cuba, China, Venezuela and India are recalcitrant to accept their citizens back. There are 42,084 deportable Cubans in the U.S., but Cuba has only accepted 4,662 people in the past decade. China has only accepted 4,709 people since 2015 but there are 37,908 deportable Chinese citizens in the United States.
Others potentially subject to a mass deportation campaign include some of the nearly 600,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who have been allowed to enter the United States through Biden’s expansive use of “parole,” an executive authority to waive people in. Many of those allowed to live and work in the United States temporarily through the parole program have sought to apply for another form of legal status, including asylum. Trump could try to revoke their temporary status with executive action.
Another group vulnerable to mass deportation includes the more than 500,000 beneficiaries of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. These are immigrants who were brought to the United States as children, grew up here and passed background checks. A U.S. District Court judge has declared the program unlawful.
DACA is closed to new applicants, but the Biden administration continues to accept renewals. Trump could try to target them, but that would probably generate substantial political resistance, and he has spoken sympathetically of their predicament.
DACA
535,000
are under the Deferred Action
for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program
A large pool of potential deportees don’t appear in ICE databases because they sneaked into the country without being encountered by Border Patrol or another government agency. If arrested, they would have the right to make a humanitarian claim to try to stay in the country. Trump aides say they will once more seek to expand a fast-tracked deportation authority known as “expedited removal” — limited to recent border-crossers — to include this category of migrants.
The relative dearth of ICE officers will be one of the biggest drags on Trump’s deportation ambitions. The agency has about 5,500 officers working on immigration enforcement nationwide, and there’s no quick path to workforce expansion. Hundreds of vacant positions have proved hard to fill, and ICE officials say it takes 18 to 24 months to recruit, vet, train and deploy a new officer.
Carrying out the kind of roundups and worksite raids that Trump extols is not a promising path to mass deportations, veteran ICE officials say. Those operations require weeks or even months of planning. Even when they result in hundreds of arrests, the number that can be easily deported is typically much smaller.
It’s far easier for ICE to take custody of potential deportees in a secure facility like a county jail, rather than going to homes, communities and job sites where risks to officers and immigrants are higher. Scores of jurisdictions across the country — including New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and others — have adopted “sanctuary” policies that limit cooperation with ICE in their jails and on the streets, hampering the agency’s ability to find and arrest potential deportees.
Holding significantly more deportees in custody will be another challenge for Trump officials. ICE has funding to pay for about 40,000 detainees per day nationwide, and it regularly needs to hold potential deportees for several weeks while coordinating their flights home with recipient nations.
A major cash infusion — through new appropriations or a budget maneuver by the Trump administration — could help boost capacity. ICE officials say it wouldn’t be difficult to expand to 55,000 or even 60,000 detainees per day, at times referred to as the number of beds needed, by working with private contractors. Growing beyond that capacity could prove difficult.
Homan has said he would like at least 100,000 beds. He and other Trump aides have floated the idea of using military bases or temporary tent facilities to hold would-be deportees. Those sites are unlikely to meet ICE safety and detention standards.
Flight capacity is another limiting factor. ICE has about a dozen aircraft available for flights that can transport about 135 deportees each. Officials say there aren’t a lot of additional unused planes available for hire, and the Pentagon has been reluctant to allow military aircraft to be used for deportations. Using other noncivilian aircraft such as cargo planes would probably violate Federal Aviation Administration rules.
Perhaps the biggest limiting factor is the ability of even willing (or non-recalcitrant) nations to take back deportees.
Even countries that cooperate with ICE such as Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala don’t have the capacity to take back significantly more people than they are already accepting. Their airports must issue permits for additional flights. Their intake facilities, or reception centers — some built with U.S. funding — have limited processing capacity. While they may be able to accept an increase in deportees, they would not be able to quickly double or triple capacity.
Any effort to deport a large number of migrants who entered during Biden’s presidency will also run into a demographic hurdle: Many of those arrivals came in family groups, which have been deported at much lower rates than single adults, DHS data shows. A federal judge has set 20 days as the maximum amount of time minors can be held with their families in immigration detention, which is one key reason that ICE historically has prioritized easier-to-deport adults.
Homan said in an interview with The Washington Post last month that the Trump administration will once more detain family groups and look to use temporary “soft-sided” tent facilities to hold them for deportation, which would probably trigger legal challenges. Homan said the best solution for parents with U.S.-citizen children is for the family to be deported together.
About this story
The Washington Post pulled data from annual retrospectives published by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, congressional reports, the Migration Policy Institute and the Department of Homeland Security. Reporters also analyzed data on immigration court cases released regularly by the Executive Office for Immigration Review.
Reporters interviewed current and incoming officials from ICE and other relevant agencies to fill in gaps in the data and contextualize the numbers.
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