President Donald Trump promised to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. Six months into his presidency, his efforts to fulfill that pledge have led to protests, lawsuits and, polling shows, decreased public support.
The Trump administration has secured billions of dollars for immigration enforcement, carried out large-scale workplace immigration raids and signed deals with foreign governments to accept deportees.
But limited available data shows that, despite these efforts, the administration is not on pace to hit its goal of deporting 1 million people a year.
Here's where Trump stands in his efforts to fulfill his signature campaign promise.
In a change from previous administrations, the Trump administration has not released monthly detailed deportation data. Instead, the Department of Homeland Security has provided news organizations vague and conflicting numbers.
DHS told PolitiFact that, as of June 30, the Trump administration had arrested about 273,000 immigrants and deported about 239,000. On July 11, NBC News reported that the administration said it had deported more than 253,000 people. (The NBC News report doesn't specify the timeframe for those numbers.)
DHS did not clarify whether its data includes people who voluntarily left the U.S., people who were quickly deported at the border and people who were returned to their home countries after being interdicted at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard.
See Figure 4 on PolitiFact.com
A Border Patrol agent, left, escorts one of four men after the group crossed the border illegally through a gap in two walls separating Mexico from the United States before turning themselves in, Jan. 23, 2025, in San Diego. (AP)
Most deportations during the Biden administration happened at the U.S. southern border.
In fiscal year 2022, the Biden administration carried out more than 1.4 million deportations, about 122,000 a month (the most of any fiscal year of former President Joe Biden's tenure). That year, border officials used a public health policy to quickly expel people more than 1 million times.
During Biden's last full fiscal year in office (October 2023 to September 2024), DHS deported more than 777,000 people. That's an average of nearly 65,000 deportations a month.
So far, according to the data DHS gave PolitiFact, Trump has deported an average of nearly 48,000 people a month.
Most deportations during the Biden administration happened at the U.S. southern border. People would illegally cross into the U.S. and be swiftly deported back to their home countries.
Under Trump, there haven't been as many people entering the U.S. illegally. Nationwide, border crossings have dropped from about 30,100 in January (Biden was in office for most of this month) to about 8,000 in June.
Trump has focused on deporting people inside the U.S. In the past few months, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have carried out raids at factories, farms, restaurants and at Home Depot parking lots where some immigrants congregate looking for daily work. These kinds of arrests and deportations are more time consuming and expensive.
See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com
Federal immigration agents toss tear gas at protesters during a raid in the agriculture area of Camarillo, Calif., July 10, 2025. (AP)
It takes a lot of personnel and logistics to carry out mass deportations. Immigration agents must identify, locate and arrest people. Detention centers must hold immigrants before they are sent out of the country. And immigration officials must arrange flights to deport people.
On July 4, Trump signed his signature tax and spending bill into law, which allocated $170 billion in immigration enforcement funding. That includes $45 billion for immigration detention and nearly $30 billion for ICE to increase deportations and hire more immigration agents.
It's unclear how quickly that influx in funding will materialize into a significant increase in deportations. In the meantime, the Trump administration has taken several steps to get around resource constraints.
It has let federal officials in agencies other than ICE, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the U.S. Marshals Service enforce immigration law. It has also made deals with state and local police offices, letting them arrest and detain migrants. In July, Florida officials began detaining immigrants in Alligator Alcatraz, a new detention facility in the Everglades.
Many immigration detention facilities are overcrowded. ICE is currently detaining about 60,000 people — that's 20,000 more people than it has congressional funding to detain. This has led to several reports of inadequate detention conditions.
To combat limited detention space, the administration will also begin detaining people in U.S.-based military bases in New Jersey and Indiana, NPR reported.
See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com
Detainees wave and spell out SOS to a helicopter flying overhead, at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Krome Detention Center, July 4, 2025, in Miami. (AP)
Generally, the Trump administration can't deport people already in the U.S. very quickly because of legal procedures that must happen first. For example, immigration judges are the ones who can order most migrants to be deported. And people have to go through immigration court for that to happen.
Currently, immigration courts have a backlog of nearly 3.5 million cases, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which analyzes immigration data.
Trump's tax and spending law caps the number of immigration judges at 800. There are currently about 700 immigration judges. The staffing cap is likely to increase immigration case backlogs, according to the American Immigration Council, an immigrant advocacy group.
Furthering the strain on the immigration court system, Trump has increased the number of people in the U.S. without a legal status by ending several programs that let people legally live and work in the U.S. To be deported, many of the people who had a temporary legal status would first have to go through an immigration court case.
To address immigration case backlogs, the Trump administration has expanded a fast-track deportation process that lets immigration agents deport people without a court hearing if they lack a credible asylum case.
The administration has also been dismissing people's immigration cases and letting ICE agents detain them at immigration courts and place them in expedited removal proceedings.
Some countries don't accept U.S. deportation flights, which can complicate Trump's efforts. However, in June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could deport people to countries other than their own with little notice.
Trump has negotiated agreements with other countries, including Guatemala, Mexico, Costa Rica and Panama, so they take people deported from the U.S. who are not from those countries.
See Figure 3 on PolitiFact.com
Migrants from Cameroon arrive at a shelter in Panama City, March 11, 2025, following deportation from the U.S., weeks of detention in a Panamanian immigration camp and release on a temporary humanitarian visa allowing a 30‑day stay. (AP)
DHS has deported hundreds of people to the Center for Terrorism Confinement, or CECOT, a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. Most of the people deported to the prison are Venezuelans whom the government said were members of the Venezuelan prison gang, Tren de Aragua. The men were deported without due process under the Alien Enemies Act, a centuries old law that Trump invoked after saying the group had invaded the U.S.
The U.S. State Department has issued a "do not travel" advisory for South Sudan, a country in the brink of civil war. Still, the Trump administration has deported people there, including people who are not South Sudan nationals.
DHS has also sent dozens of immigrants to the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for detention.
Based on the current deportation pace, Trump is unlikely to deport 1 million people in his first year in office. But he has taken many steps to try to advance his mass deportations pledge and is showing no signs of backing away from it. We rate this promise In the Works.