 "US deportations reach highest level since 2014, surpassing Trump-years")
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reported a record high rate of deportations during fiscal year 2024 – the highest in a decade, according to a new government report released Thursday, as reported by Reuters.
The US deported about 271,000 immigrants to 192 countries, marking another shift in the Biden administration’s immigration enforcement strategy toward the end of President Joe Biden’s term.
Highest number in any single year
The numbers are higher than deportations in any single year during President-elect Donald Trump’s first administration (2017–2021) and represent the highest since 2014. Biden, a Democrat, campaigned on promising to roll back his predecessor’s harsh immigration policies, but he eventually faced a growing number of illegal crossings that forced a more stringent approach to enforcement.
The transition team of Trump repeated his campaign promise to launch an unprecedented deportation effort targeting undocumented immigrants in response to the report. “On day one, President Trump will fix the immigration and national security nightmare that Joe Biden created by launching the largest mass deportation operation of illegal criminals in United States history,” said Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s spokeswoman.
Deportation surge amid immigration challenges
The rising deportation numbers come at a time when an estimated 13–14 million immigrants are living in the US without legal status, a number that has increased from earlier figures of approximately 11 million in 2022.
Even with an increase in deportations, ICE arrests of illegal immigrants within the US declined 33 per cent from the year prior, which the agency said was due to diverting resources to help strengthen the border. At the same time, Biden’s overall removals and returns to Mexico were higher than any year in Donald Trump’s first term in the Oval Office.
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Trump’s aim for mass deportation
As Trump readies himself to move back into the White House, the administration has been hinting that it would be using federal resources to power a mass deportation drive. But his attempts at scaling up deportations in his first term only fetched mixed results as numbers didn’t even match those in former President Barack Obama’s terms.
The report points out the ongoing challenges in managing US immigration policy and the polarised debate over how best to deal with illegal immigration.