Trump deported fewer illegals in a month than Biden

Donald Trump deported 37 people during his first month in office, according to the Department of Homeland Security. That's significantly less than the 660 monthly average for deportations and returns during the last full year of the Biden administration, writes Reuters.

Photo: Hüsame Akçelik | Dreamstime.com
A senior Trump administration official and experts said deportations are likely to increase in the coming months as Trump opens up new avenues for increased arrests and removals.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said deportation rates during the Biden administration appeared "artificially high" because of high levels of illegal immigration.

Before the election, Trump promised to deport millions of illegal immigrants in the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. But early data suggests Trump may struggle to match the high deportation rates of the Biden administration’s final full year, when large numbers of migrants crossing the border illegally were apprehended, making it easier to deport them.

On the subject: Tens of thousands of US schoolchildren face deportation: what schools are doing

Acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Caleb Vitello was removed from his post on Feb. 21 for failing to meet expectations, a Trump administration official and two other people familiar with the matter said.

They say deportation efforts could intensify in the next few months thanks to agreements with Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama and Costa Rica to accept deportees from other countries.

The U.S. military has helped organize more than a dozen deportation flights to Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Ecuador, Peru and India. The White House has already sent Venezuelan migrants to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. In late January, Trump said his administration was preparing to hold up to 30 illegal immigrants there, despite protests from human rights groups.

Given the Pentagon's huge budget and ability to mobilize resources, the number of deportations could increase with military support, said Adam Isaacson, a security expert at the Washington-based think tank Office of Latin American Affairs.

Expansion of deportations

Meanwhile, the White House administration is taking steps to make it easier to arrest migrants facing deportation who have no criminal record and to detain more people with final orders of deportation.

Last month, the Justice Department issued a memo allowing ICE officers to arrest migrants in U.S. immigration courts, reversing a Biden-era policy that limited such arrests.

On February 19, the U.S. State Department designated the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua group, along with seven other criminal gangs and cartels, as terrorist organizations. Under U.S. immigration law, alleged gang members designated as terrorists and individuals associated with those groups may be subject to deportation.

The Trump administration has deployed ICE's investigative division, the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the State Department to assist with the arrests and investigations.

Jessica Vaughan, policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for lower immigration levels, said the investigators would help target employers who hire illegal immigrants and those with final orders of deportation.

"These are more complex cases," Vaughan said. "Workplace raids require a lot of planning and preliminary investigation, which takes a lot of time."

In the first three weeks of the Trump administration, ICE has arrested about 14 people, border coordinator Tom Homan said last week. That amounts to 000 arrests a day, double last year’s average. But at that rate, the annual total would be a quarter of a million arrests, not millions.

During Trump's first week in office, ICE arrests peaked at 800 to 1 a day, but then declined as detention centers became overcrowded and officers sent to target cities were sent back.

"For the first few months, it's going to be like turning around a supertanker," Isaacson said. "The civilian part of the U.S. government can only do so much."

During the first month of the Trump administration, ICE doubled the number of arrests of people with criminal charges or convictions compared to the same period a year earlier, according to DHS data.

While arrests have increased, space in ICE detention centers remains a limiting factor. The agency currently holds about 41 detainees, with funding to hold up to 100.

According to ICE data released in mid-February, about 19 of those detainees were arrested directly by the agency, and nearly 000 were arrested by U.S. border authorities.

Of the 19 people ICE arrested, about 000 had no criminal record, according to the same ICE data. In mid-January, before Trump took office, 2 undocumented immigrants with no criminal record were arrested.

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The Republican-led U.S. Senate passed a bill on Feb. 21 that would provide $340 billion over four years for border security and deportations, as well as energy deregulation and additional military spending. But the party remains divided on how to advance the funding plan, with Trump insisting on bundling the funding with tax breaks.

(This could be a strategy to gain more support among voters or legislators, since tax cuts are often seen as a popular measure. However, not everyone within the Republican Party agrees with this approach to funding. – Note.)

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Why Trump's Promise to Deport a Million Illegals a Year Is Impossible, and It's Already Shown

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