Trump deporting people at a slower rate than Biden's last year in office
Donald Trump deported 37,660 people during his first month in office, previously unpublished U.S. Department of Homeland Security data show, far less than the monthly average of 57,000 removals and returns in the last full year of Joe Biden's administration.
A senior Trump administration official and experts said deportations were poised to rise in coming months as Trump opens up new avenues to ramp up arrests and removals.
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Biden-era deportation numbers appeared «artificially high» because of higher levels of illegal immigration.
Trump campaigned for the White House promising to deport millions of immigrants in the U.S. illegally in the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. Yet initial figures suggest Trump could struggle to match higher deportation rates during the last full year of the Biden administration when large numbers of migrants were caught crossing illegally, making them easier to deport.
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The acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Caleb Vitello, was reassigned on Friday due to a failure to meet expectations, a Trump official and two other people familiar with the matter said. The deportation effort could take off in several months, aided by agreements from Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama, and Costa Rica to take deportees from other nations, the sources said.
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The U.S. military has assisted in more than a dozen military deportation flights to Guatemala,