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Deportations Haven’t Surged Under Trump. But Here’s How They’ve Changed. [1]

['Albert Sun', 'Ashley Wu']

Date: 2025-03-22

Deportations Haven’t Surged Under Trump. But Here’s How They’ve Changed. Leer en español

In the first two months of President Trump’s immigration crackdown, the administration has taken new and unusual measures to conduct deportations. It has enlisted military planes, pressured other countries to retrieve their citizens, sent people to third countries far from their homes, and invoked a wartime law to remove migrants without due process.

Deportation flights since Trump took office Military flight Other flight Dominican Republic Haiti Honduras 54 flights Mexico 31 flights Cuba Jamaica Nicaragua Guatemala 60 flights Venezuela Colombia El Salvador 25 flights Ecuador Brazil Peru Costa Rica Panama Georgia Albania Mauritania Jordan Nepal Pakistan Egypt Benin Mali Chad India 5 flights Nigeria Cameroon Liberia Kenya Burkina Faso Angola Togo Guinea Dominican Republic Albania Georgia Mexico 31 flights Mauritania Egypt Nepal Haiti Pakistan Jordan Honduras 54 flights Cuba Benin Jamaica Mali Chad Nicaragua India 5 flights Guinea Venezuela Nigeria Colombia Liberia Guatemala 60 flights Cameroon Kenya Ecuador Burkina Faso Brazil Angola Togo El Salvador 25 flights Peru Costa Rica Panama Dominican Republic Albania Georgia Mexico 31 flights Mauritania Egypt Nepal Haiti Pakistan Jordan Honduras 54 flights Cuba Benin Jamaica Mali Chad Nicaragua India 5 flights Guinea Venezuela Nigeria Colombia Liberia Guatemala 60 flights Cameroon Kenya Ecuador Burkina Faso Brazil Angola Togo El Salvador 25 flights Peru Costa Rica Panama Notes: Deportations on commercial airline flights are not shown. Data is through March 19.

But even as immigration officials have escalated efforts to remove people from the United States, they continue to fall short of the mass deportations Mr. Trump vowed to carry out. Overall, the number of flights and their destinations look largely similar to those under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

There have been 258 deportation flights since Mr. Trump took office, according to a New York Times review of an independent database, about the level in the final months of the Biden administration. Less typical: At least 31 flights were on military planes, which are much more expensive to operate than the chartered jets U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement uses.

Deportation flights per month The pace of deportation flights largely held steady from November to March. Military flights All other flights BIDEN TRUMP 150 flights Data through March 19 100 50 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 BIDEN TRUMP 150 flights Data through March 19 100 50 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 Notes: Chart shows the total number of deportation stops. Each deportation flight departing the U.S. may stop to deport people in multiple countries.

Flights are not a perfect measure of deportations. Many immigrants are deported by land to Mexico, and others on regular commercial airline travel. But because the federal government has not released data on whom it is deporting, tracking deportation flights offers a way to assess which people and countries are affected by Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown.

The flight data was collected by Tom Cartwright, an immigrant rights advocate, and was verified by The New York Times. Mr. Cartwright has been using public information to monitor deportation flights for the past five years.

In response to questions about the number of flights, a Homeland Security Department official provided a statement saying that ICE was working to arrest and deport people and that the agency expected the number of deportations to rise.

Typically, when people are deported, they are sent back to their country of origin. The Trump administration has been pushing for more third countries to accept deportees who are originally from elsewhere. In February, Costa Rica accepted a military flight carrying people from Central Asia and India, and Panama accepted people from Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Destinations of deportation flights Trump Jan. 20–March 19, 2025 Biden Nov. 18, 2024–Jan. 19, 2025 Guatemala 60 flights 65 flights Honduras 55 47 Mexico 31 42 El Salvador 25 15 Ecuador 16 17 Colombia 16 20 Peru 6 3 India 5 0 Dominican Republic 5 7 Nicaragua 4 4 Brazil 4 4 Venezuela 3 0 Panama 3 0 Jamaica 2 2 Haiti 2 2 Cuba 2 2 Costa Rica 2 0 China 0 2 Trump Jan. 20–March 19 Biden Nov. 18–Jan. 19 Guatemala 60 flights 65 flights Honduras 55 47 Mexico 42 31 El Salvador 25 15 Ecuador 17 16 Colombia 20 16 Peru 6 3 India 5 0 Dominican Republic 5 7 Nicaragua 4 4 Brazil 4 4 Venezuela 0 3 Panama 3 0 Jamaica 2 2 Haiti 2 2 Cuba 2 2 Costa Rica 2 0 China 2 0 Note: Only countries that received at least two deportation flights under either administration over the relevant periods are shown. The periods span the same number of non-holiday weekdays.

Under the terms of an agreement with the United States, Mexico has for years accepted deportees from select countries in Central America. But new agreements with other countries could lead to more removals of immigrants whose countries have declined to accept them.

The administration has tried other novel ways to remove immigrants and pressure their home countries into accepting them. It has flown hundreds of detainees, many of them Venezuelan, to the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay, before sending them on to Honduras or in many cases returning them to detention in the United States.

On March 15, the administration said it was using the Alien Enemies Act to justify flying hundreds of Venezuelans accused of being gang members to El Salvador. That night, a federal judge ordered the flights to stop.

Below is a timeline of these unusual measures:

Despite these efforts, immigration officials have struggled to meet Mr. Trump’s enforcement goals. At least 27,000 people were deported in the six weeks after he took office, the latest federal data shows, a pace slower than under Mr. Biden. After an early surge in arrests, more people are sitting in immigrant detention facilities, in part because deportations have not kept up.

Another reason deportations are lower may be that fewer people are trying to cross the southern border. In February, fewer than 50 people detained by Customs and Border Protection were put directly onto deportation flights to Mexico and Central America. That’s compared with more than 2,000 in each of October, November and December.

Mr. Cartwright said he had noticed more flights making multiple stops, especially those traveling to Central America. This suggested that immigration officials were finding it harder to group enough people from the same country together to fill each flight, he said, and that fewer people were being transported overall.

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[1] Url: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/22/us/trump-deportation-flights-maps.html

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