Joe Biden surpasses Donald Trump’s record: Deports record number of illegal immigrants, including Indians, in 2024

In the past year, US immigration authorities deported the highest number of undocumented immigrants in nearly a decade, surpassing the deportation figures from Donald Trump’s first term.  

According to a report from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), over 271,000 individuals were deported during the last fiscal year, including 1,529 Indians. 

The report was released just weeks before President-elect Trump, who plans to prioritise mass deportations in his upcoming administration, takes office. While President Joe Biden had promised to pause deportations in 2021, his administration ultimately expanded them following an increase in border crossings. 

ICE’s report attributes the rise in deportations to a more streamlined process, as well as the use of deportation flights to more distant locations, such as Africa and Asia, which had previously refused US deportations for years. 

A significant portion of the deportations in fiscal year 2024 involved migrants apprehended by border officials. Around 82 percent of the 271,000 deportations were individuals detained by border agents. 

President-elect Trump has pledged to carry out the “largest deportation operation in history” upon taking office on January 20. While migrant encounters along the U.S.-Mexico border reached an all-time high in December 2023, they have since declined significantly, now at their lowest levels since July 2020, according to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP). This drop is also attributed to improved diplomatic efforts, convincing other countries to accept more deportees. 

As of 2022, nearly half of the undocumented immigrants in the US — around 4.8 million out of 11 million — were from Mexico, with other major origin countries including Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.  

Since January 2022, about 2 million immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela entered the US either illegally or through Biden-era humanitarian programs. Trump has indicated plans to end these programs, which include pathways for migrants with US sponsors and those who use an app to enter legally while in Mexico. 

In 2022, an estimated 11 million immigrants were in the US illegally or with temporary status, a number some experts suggest has now grown to between 13 and 14 million. Immigrants with temporary protections are not immediately deportable, and many live in “sanctuary” states that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.