Immigration and Customs Enforcement has revealed deportations hit a 10-year high in 2024 as President-elect Donald Trump promises to increase that figure dramatically when he takes office in a month.
ICE deported 271,484 people this year, the highest since 2014 when the agency deported more than 300,000 people, according to their fiscal year 2024 report.
During Trump’s first term, his administration hit a high of 267,258 deportations in 2019. This report comes after Trump spent much of his time on the campaign trail criticizing President Joe Biden’s administration on immigration.
This year’s number of deportations is still not high enough, Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the president-elect and soon-to-be White House press secretary, said in a statement to The Independent.
"This number pales in comparison to the tens of millions of illegal criminals, including thousands of murderers, rapists, and drug dealers, who Joe Biden allowed to illegally enter our country and continue to roam freely in our communities to this very day,” Leavitt said.
“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,” she continued.
Leavitt’s statement echoes Trump’s repeated, unfounded claims that millions of criminals are entering the U.S. Several peer-reviewed studies have shown there is generally no evidence linking immigration to violent crime in the U.S., the Associated Press reports.
Trump revealed his plan for mass deportations in a December 8 interview on NBC News’s Meet the Press.
“You have no choice,” Trump said. “First of all, they’re costing us a fortune. But we’re starting with the criminals, and we’ve got to do it. And then we’re starting with others, and we’re going to see how it goes.”
In that same interview, Trump said that families with mixed immigration status could be deported together to avoid separations. The president-elect also revealed he wants to end birthright citizenship, which is guaranteed in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
“Well, we’re going to have to get it changed,” Trump said of the Constitutional right. “We’ll maybe have to go back to the people. But we have to end it. We’re the only country that has it, you know.”
While Trump did not offer details in the interview, a 2023 post on his campaign website said he plans to issue an executive order ending birthright citizenship on his first day in office, PBS News reports. The order would “require that at least one parent be a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident for their future children to become automatic U.S. citizens.”
Given the 14th Amendment says “all persons born in the United States are citizens,” any order ending birthright citizenship would almost certainly be challenged in court.
Trump’s plan for Dreamers — people who were brought to the U.S. as kids without documentation — was less clear.
“The Dreamers are going to come later, and we have to do something about the Dreamers because these are people that have been brought here at a very young age. And many of these are middle-aged people now,” he said. “They don’t even speak the language of their country. And yes, we’re going to do something about the Dreamers.”
