U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported more than 270,000 people to 192 countries, including India, in a recent 12-month period, the highest annual number in a decade, a report released Thursday outlined the president’s financial and operational challenges. -President-elect Donald Trump will face making good on his promise of mass deportations.
ICE, the main government agency responsible for removing people who are in the country illegally, had 271,484 deportations in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, nearly double the 142,580 in the same period a year earlier.
It was ICE’s highest deportation count since 2014, when it removed 315,943 people. It peaked at 267,258 in 2019 during Trump’s first term in the White House.
Increased deportation flights, including on weekends, and streamlined travel procedures for people sent to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador fueled the increase, ICE said. The agency made the first major flight to China in six years and also intercepted planes in Albania, Angola, Egypt, Georgia, Ghana, Guinea, India, Mauritania, Romania, Senegal, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Also on Thursday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said authorities arrested 46,612 people accused of illegally crossing the border from Mexico in November, down 18% from 56,526 a month earlier and up 80% from the all-time high of 250,000 in December 2023. Over-arrests have decreased. By half when Mexican authorities stepped up enforcement within their own borders a year ago and by half again when President Joe Biden introduced tougher asylum restrictions in June. The November numbers were the lowest since July 2020 and indicate that the widely expected spike after Trump was elected president did not happen immediately.
In the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, Mexico (87,298) was the most common destination for deportees, followed by Guatemala (66,435) and Honduras (45,923), the ICE report said. Mexico and Central American countries are expected to continue to bear the brunt of deportations, in part because those governments accept their citizens more easily than others and logistics are easier.
Still, ICE’s detention facilities and staffing limited its access as the number of people it monitored through the immigration courts grew. The agency’s enforcement and removal unit has held steady at about 6,000 officers over the past decade while its caseload has nearly quadrupled to 7.6 million, from just 6.1 million last year.
ICE detained an average of 37,700 people per day in the most recent 12-month period, a figure determined by congressional funding. With detention space a potential barrier to mass deportation, the state of Texas is offering rural land as a staging area.
ICE made 113,431 arrests in the latest period, down 34% from 170,590 a year earlier. The agency said the need to focus resources on the border with Mexico diverted attention from arrests in the interior of the country.
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