Deportation Statistics 2026

The Trump administration's second-term immigration enforcement campaign represents the most aggressive use of interior deportation authority in modern US history. The stated target of one million removals annually would nearly double the previous record. ICE has expanded its operations from traditional border and criminal enforcement to include long-term residents, DACA recipients, people with pending asylum claims, and individuals with decades of US residency and US-citizen family members. The administration has also deployed military personnel to support enforcement operations and used the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — not invoked since World War II — to authorize removals of Venezuelan nationals accused of gang affiliation.

The due process challenge is acute. The immigration court system — which was already backlogged by 3-4 million pending cases before the current enforcement surge — lacks the capacity to provide individualized hearings at the scale of the administration's removal targets. Expedited removal procedures, which allow deportation without an immigration court hearing for people who cannot prove continuous presence of more than two years, have been expanded. Critics, including federal judges, have found that these procedures are being applied to people with legal claims to remain and without adequate opportunity to present evidence.

The industries most dependent on undocumented workers are experiencing real disruptions. Agricultural industry groups in California, Florida and the Southeast have reported harvest shortfalls and difficulty recruiting replacement workers. Construction industry associations cite project delays in markets where undocumented workers represent 15%+ of the labor force. The food processing industry — which employs hundreds of thousands of workers in states like Iowa, Nebraska and North Carolina — has seen enforcement raids directly disrupt production.

The economic evidence does not support a simple "deportation creates jobs for Americans" narrative. Labor economists find that undocumented workers are often concentrated in jobs that native-born workers have not historically sought, particularly in physically demanding agricultural and construction roles. Where replacement workers have been found, wages have risen — but in many cases, production simply fell or moved offshore. The CBO estimates that reduced immigration at the current scale reduces GDP growth by 0.5-1.0 percentage points annually, primarily by reducing the working-age population and consumer base.