Report: 4 in 5 people deported under Trump had no criminal conviction

About four of every five people deported in the first 18 months of President Donald Trump's second term had no criminal conviction. That finding comes from an analysis released Thursday, Oct. 22, by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), a nonpartisan research group ²³.

The report counts about 980,000 deportations from Jan. 20, 2025, through July 31, 2026 ¹². That is a large number. It is still short of the administration's promise of 1 million deportations a year once Congress paid for its immigration push ¹⁴.

MPI estimates the government is on track for about 660,000 deportations in the latest year, up from about 620,000 the year before ¹². That is 26% above the yearly average under President Joe Biden from 2021 to 2024. It is far below the roughly 1.86 million deportations in 2000, under President Bill Clinton ¹.

The report's author is Marc Rosenblum, who used to run the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Office of Homeland Security Statistics ³. He resigned from DHS in July and called the administration's approach a "war on immigrants" and a "war on facts" ². MPI got its data through Freedom of Information Act requests, because DHS stopped publishing its detailed monthly enforcement reports in January 2025 ¹².

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At a time when unprecedented resources and policy attention are being directed at increasing arrests and deportations, this analysis fills a critical gap in understanding immigration enforcement trends.

Few fit the 'worst of the worst' label

President Trump has promised to go after "the worst of the worst" ³. The report found that about 20% of the people deported, roughly 190,000, had a criminal conviction ³. Among formal removals, 31% involved people with convictions, compared with an average of 44% from 2009 to 2021 ³.

Many of the people deported had been in the country a long time. Of those who had lived here at least two years, 71% had no criminal conviction. For those here at least a decade, the figure was 61% ²³.

That matters because the deportations are no longer mostly about people who just crossed the border. They increasingly reach people who have spent years, sometimes decades, building lives in American towns and cities.

More arrests far from the border

Most deportations, 69%, still involved people first stopped at the border ¹. But arrests inside the country are growing. They made up 28% of deportations in 2025, 34% in the first six months of 2026 and 39% in July 2026 ².

In raw numbers, deportations that began with an arrest inside the country rose from about 8,000 a month early in the term to about 19,000 a month from May to July 2026 ²³. Most of those arrests are made by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the DHS agency that detains and deports people.

MPI also found that voluntary departures, where people give up their court cases and agree to leave, have reached a record high by its count, about 170,000 since January 2025 ¹⁴. Advocates say some people sign those agreements mainly to get out of ICE detention ¹.

The money behind this is enormous. Congress has provided $240 billion in enforcement funding for DHS through the 2029 budget year, along with 12,000 more ICE officers ³.

The White House's answer

The White House did not dispute the report's numbers point by point. Spokesperson Lauren Bis responded with a broader claim ⁷.

President Trump has delivered the largest reduction in illegal immigration in modern history.

The administration has put out larger figures of its own. It has cited 1.2 million deportations or removals, a number the Associated Press said it could not reconcile with MPI's estimate ¹. It also says more than 3 million people in the country illegally have left since January 2025, including about 2.2 million who left on their own ².

MPI's estimate is much lower. It says between 790,000 and 1.9 million immigrants who had lived in the U.S. for at least a year left through deportation or by leaving on their own ²³.

What Democrats have said

Democrats in Congress have been raising the same concerns for months. In May, House Judiciary Committee Democrats, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, released a staff report arguing that mass deportations were getting in the way of state and local criminal prosecutions ⁵. It said victims, witnesses and even defendants were being deported before trials were over ⁵.

The Trump Administration’s mass deportation campaign is not making America safer.

In February, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, laid out his party's demands to rein in ICE ⁶.

The American people support orderly immigration enforcement that removes violent criminals from our streets.

The pattern is clear. The administration promised to focus on dangerous criminals, but most of the people it deports have no conviction, a growing share are arrested far from the border, and the public gets less government data to check the claims. Republicans control the House and the Senate, which write ICE's budget. Voters choose who holds those seats on Tuesday, Nov. 3.

The Record

1. Jan 20, 2025President Trump's second term begins, the start of the period MPI studied ¹.
2. Jan 31, 2025DHS publishes its last detailed monthly enforcement report in January 2025; after that, researchers rely on records requests ¹².
3. May 12, 2026House Judiciary Democrats release a report saying deportations are undermining state and local criminal prosecutions ⁵.
4. Jul 31, 2026MPI's count ends at about 980,000 deportations over 18 months ¹².
5. Oct 22, 2026MPI releases its analysis finding about 80% of deported people had no criminal conviction ²³.

Sources

1. AP via NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth, “Deportations climb under Trump but fall short of White House target, new report finds” (2026-10-22). nbcdfw.com/news/national-international/deportations-climb-un
2. Newsweek, “Nearly 1 Million Deported from US Under Trump 2.0: Analysis” (2026-10-22). newsweek.com/nearly-1-million-deported-from-us-under-trump-2
3. Arab News (with Reuters), “Four in five immigrants deported under Trump 2.0 have no criminal record, study finds” (2026-10-23). arabnews.com/world/four-in-five-immigrants-deported-under-tr
4. AP via El Paso Matters, “Deportations climb under Trump but fall short of White House target, a new report finds” (2026-10-22). elpasomatters.org/2026/10/22/deportations-climb-under-trump-
5. House Judiciary Committee Democrats, “New Judiciary Democrats Report Reveals Trump Deportation Policies Are Undermining State and Local Criminal Prosecutions” (2026-05-12). democrats-judiciary.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/ne
6. Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats, “Durbin Lays Out Senate Democrats' Demands To Rein In ICE” (2026-02-02). judiciary.senate.gov/press/dem/releases/durbin-lays-out-sena
7. AP via Henderson Daily Dispatch, “Deportations climb under Trump but fall short of White House target, a new report finds” (2026-10-22). hendersondispatch.com/archives/deportations-climb-under-trum

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