CNN: ‘ICE Has Deported Nearly 200K People Since Trump Returned’

On August 28, CNN reported “ICE has deported nearly 200K people since Trump returned to office, on track for highest level in a decade”. Read deeper, however, and the outlet contends President Obama did better in 2014, and that “senior Trump officials” nonetheless “remain frustrated with the agency”. But how true are either of those claims? Respectfully, anybody who’s frustrated with ICE should consider what the agency has accomplished in the face of “sanctuary policies” and chronic underfunding.

Breaking It Down

According to CNN, ICE “deported nearly 200,000 people in the first seven months of President Donald Trump’s administration”, and “had already recorded around 71,400 deportations between October 2024 through the end of December” — bringing the ICE total in the first 10-plus months of FY 2025 to around 270,000.

Note, however, how CNN separates out the Trump II numbers. According to that article:

The latest figure is a slice of the overall deportations that have occurred under Trump. The administration has recorded nearly 350,000 deportations since the president returned to office in January. The other deportations this year included repatriations by US Customs and Border Protection and the Coast Guard, as well as people who chose to self-deport.

…

CBP, the agency responsible for border security, recorded more than 132,000 deportations this year.

Color me somewhat skeptical about the Biden deportations, as it’s not clear whether those involved removals of aliens who had already entered — which appears to be the case with the 200,000 ICE Trump deportations CNN highlights — or also includes aliens first apprehended by CBP at the borders and the ports and then handed over to ICE for deportation.

If it’s the latter, then the Biden figures are just the latest example of what my colleague Jessica Vaughan called “cooking the books” to bump up deportation numbers by adding border returns, in September 2014.

Those 200,000 ICE deportations under Trump II, by contrast, appear to be the real thing.

“Interior Removals”

And by the “real thing”, I’m referring to ICE “interior removals”. Let me explain.

As I have explained in the past, there are two key metrics to use in determining how stringent and effective any administration’s immigration enforcement efforts are: ICE arrests of aliens in the United States (“interior arrests”), and ICE deportation of aliens from within the United States (as opposed to at the border), also known as “interior removals”.

Those are the two key metrics to gauge immigration enforcement because CBP encounters and returns at the border are reactive, driven by the efforts of illegal migrants to enter the United States. Interior arrests and removals, on the other hand, reflect the agency’s proactive efforts to drive down the illegal population.

In that vein, note that CNN claims that, “the last time” ICE recorded more than 300,000 deportations “was under President Barack Obama, when around 316,000 people were removed in fiscal year 2014”.

That claim is true — kind of.

According to the FY 2014 “ICE Enforcement and Removals Report”, the agency deported nearly 316,000 aliens that fiscal year, 102,000-plus interior removals and just over 213,700 “removals of individuals apprehended while attempting to unlawfully enter the United States” — that is CBP encounters in which the alien was turned over to ICE for removal in the “book-cooking” game referred to above.

By that (more accurate) accounting, ICE under Trump has already deported nearly twice as many aliens from the interior as the Obama administration did in FY 2014.

Note that by FY 2014, however, Obama’s DHS had already placed “priorities” (read: “restrictions”) on ICE enforcement actions, and just after the midterm elections in November 2014 (in FY 2015), DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson tightened the leash on ICE interior arrest and removal efforts even more.

You must go all the way back to FY 2011 — prior to the first Obama “prioritization” effort — to find a fiscal year when ICE interior removals exceeded 200,000; that year, the agency removed more than 223,750 aliens from U.S. streets.

Given there’s another month in the fiscal year, and that according to the CNN figures, ICE is averaging more than 28,500 interior removals per month, the agency is likely to eclipse that figure in FY 2025.

By the way, the high-water mark for ICE interior removals was set in FY 2009, when there were nearly 238,000 interior removals; depending on how those Biden-era removal numbers shake out, even that record is in reach.

The Impact of “Sanctuary Policies”

The 200,000 interior removal total in the last seven months is more impressive given the negative impact “sanctuary policies” are having on ICE’s enforcement efforts.

As the Center defines the term, sanctuary policies are:

laws, ordinances, regulations, resolutions, policies, or other practices that obstruct immigration enforcement and shield criminals from ICE — either by refusing to or prohibiting agencies from complying with ICE detainers, imposing unreasonable conditions on detainer acceptance, denying ICE access to interview incarcerated aliens, or otherwise impeding communication or information exchanges between their personnel and federal immigration officers.

Under “Border Czar” Tom Homan’s “worst first” deportation plan, ICE would prefer to focus its removal efforts on the hundreds of thousands of criminal aliens currently present in the United States — many of whom are sitting in state and local detention facilities and jails.

There are plenty of states and localities across the country that want ICE to scoop up their criminal aliens and deport them from the United States, if for no other reason than to keep criminal recidivists — who reoffend at high rates on average — out of their communities.

Other jurisdictions, however, prefer to shield their criminals from ICE, for either poorly reasoned, highly emotional, or purely political reasons (usually all three), and consequently have adopted sanctuary policies.

Unfortunately, as my colleague Jason Richwine explained in December, more than half (56.3 percent) of all illegal aliens live in such “sanctuary jurisdictions”. That means ICE must go onto the streets and into communities in those jurisdictions to find, arrest, and deport those aliens.

Some of those jurisdictions were sanctuaries prior to FY 2009, when ICE hit that interior removal record, but as I told Congress in July, the sanctuary movement only mushroomed into what it is today in the mid-2010s — at the same time the Obama administration was restricting ICE enforcement.

Trump and Homan have now taken the reins off ICE officers and agents, and as CNN noted, Congress has expanded agency funding in the most recent reconciliation bill.

But the impediment of sanctuary policies remains, and many jurisdictions are now “doubling down” on their anti-ICE policies even though three-quarters of U.S. voters support “deporting immigrants who are here illegally and have committed crimes efforts” in the latest Harvard/Harris poll.

“That’s Where the Problem Is”

In response, Homan has vowed to “to double down and triple down on sanctuary cities. … Not because they’re a blue city or a blue state, but because we know that’s where the problem is.”

Given how underfunded ICE was in January, the fact that officers have overcome those sanctuary policies to make 200,000 interior removals over the last seven months is a miracle. If “senior Trump officials remain frustrated with the agency” as CNN claims, however, they may want to consider the hurdles ICE has already overcome.