Interior arrests now outpace border deportations as the Trump administration intensifies visible enforcement across U.S. communities.
Over the past year, President Trump’s administration has deported about 230,000 people who were arrested inside the country and another 270,000 at the border, a New York Times analysis of federal data shows.
The number of deportations from interior arrests since Mr. Trump took office is already higher than the total during the entire four years of the Biden administration. It offers the clearest measure of the impact of Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown and expansive efforts to fulfill his campaign promise to deport millions of people.
At the same time, the number of people trying to cross the Southwest border has failed to record lows. As a result, far fewer people were arrested and deported from the border than in the preceding few years.
Another roughly 40,000 people returned to their countries after signing up for “self-deport” and receiving a stipend through a novel program and app provided by the administration.
That brings the total number of deportations since Mr. Trump took office to 540,000 — fewer than in the last two years of the Biden administration, when border crossings were at record highs. There were 590,000 total deportations in 2023 and 650,000 in 2024.
Homeland Security officials said in December that more than 622,000 people had been deported under Mr. Trump. They did not respond to requests for a more detailed breakdown of that figure, and the department’s statistics division has not published any of its once-routine detailed reports since Mr. Trump took office. It most likely includes all repatriations carried out by various homeland security subagencies.
Why is immigration enforcement receiving so much more attention now?
Under Mr. Trump, immigration arrests and deportations are much more visible and disruptive to communities across the country. The administration has also aggressively publicized its enforcement actions with a steady stream of slickly produced videos, memes and mug shots.
In the past, ICE made most of its arrests in partnership with local jails and prisons, quietly taking into custody immigrants who had already been arrested by another law enforcement agency. Arrests at jails and prisons went up over the last year, but the increase was far exceeded by the growth in what ICE calls “at-large” arrests, the apprehensions of immigrants on the streets, in courthouses, and at homes and businesses. These quadrupled to about 150,000 and made up a majority of immigration arrests in 32 states and Washington, D.C.
They were most common in states like California, Illinois and New York, where local governments have passed laws blocking local jails and prisons from transferring people to ICE custody.
