Here’s Where Trump’s Deportations Are Sending Migrants

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In the first few months of his second term, President Donald Trump has taken steps to carry out what he has previously described will be “the largest domestic deportation operation” in U.S. history. The administration says its moves—which include hundreds of deportation flights, the expansion of third-country removals, and Trump’s invocation of the seldom-used 1798 Alien Enemies Act—are necessary to stem unauthorized immigration to the United States. Experts say recipient countries are likely feeling economic and political pressure from the United States to accept deportees.

How many deportations have there been under the second Trump administration?

Since Trump took office, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has deported non-U.S. citizens via charter and commercial flights, although the exact number of migrants is unclear. According to data from Witness at the Border, a U.S.-based migrant advocacy group, there have been more than six hundred deportation flights [PDF] since Trump’s return to office. Some of them were conducted via military aircraft, which defense officials said they stopped using to transfer migrants in early March because it was expensive and inefficient, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The most notable deportations occurred on March 15, when Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport more than two hundred alleged members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang—which the United States has designated a terrorist organization—to El Salvador. (A New York Times investigation found little evidence of their alleged membership.) 

Trump’s threats to invoke the law—a wartime authority that gives him sweeping powers to detain or deport noncitizens with little to no due process—were a staple of his 2024 presidential campaign and a critical lever with which he promised to root out undocumented immigrants. A federal judge in May temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s use of the law for deportations. Later that month, the Supreme Court temporarily extended a block on the law’s use, sending the issue back to a lower court.

Trump has likened unauthorized immigration to an “invasion” of the United States, and Tom Homan, his so-called border czar and the former acting director of ICE (2017–2018), has said the administration’s deportation policy prioritizes the removal of individuals with criminal records and those who are suspected national security threats. 

As part of the administration’s crackdown, ICE has targeted work sites, detaining non-criminals and individuals with final deportation orders. It has also gone after those attending routine court check-ins and other immigration-related appointments. Trump has also ordered immigration officials to expand deportation efforts in Democratic-run cities including Los Angeles and New York. The administration confirmed in June that ICE raids were targeting the U.S. agriculture and hospitality industries.

But while there has been a significant increase in immigration arrests, deportation figures are not as high as expected. According to the Migration Policy Institute, the Trump administration is on track to deport roughly half a million people this year—far below its goal of one million annually and the 685,000 recorded in fiscal year 2024 under President Joe Biden. Biden deported approximately four million people during his presidency compared to the roughly three million deported by his predecessor, Barack Obama, who was often dubbed the “deporter-in-chief.” Experts say the high number of deportations under Biden was likely in part because there was a greater number of migrants arriving at the southern U.S. border.

Where are deportees going?

Central America’s so-called Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras received more than half of all deportations in May. Millions of people have fled the region in recent years, which has experienced worsening poverty, violence, and instability. Most other destinations for removal flights were to countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, including Colombia and Mexico. Countries in Africa, meanwhile, received only 10 percent of deportations.

To facilitate deportations, the administration reached agreements with several countries for them to serve as stopover locations or destinations for deported migrants. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio struck two such deals with El Salvador and Guatemala in February, both of which agreed to accept deportation flights of their own citizens in addition to other nationalities. (The U.S. government reportedly paid about $5 million to El Salvador to accept U.S. deportees.) Brazil, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras, India, Mexico, Panama, and Venezuela have also agreed to receive—or have already received—U.S. deportation flights.

Meanwhile, since February, approximately five hundred migrants have cycled through the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which the United States established to hold suspected terrorists and enemy fighters after 9/11. In June, the administration took steps to vet nine thousand migrants for potential transfer to Guantánamo.

Some countries, including Colombia and Panama, have said they are providing migrants with food, water, and medical care, as well as the chance to apply for asylum with assistance from UN agencies. But human rights groups remain concerned about how migrants are treated upon their arrival in other countries such as El Salvador, where deportees have been transferred to the country’s notorious mega prison.

What was the Supreme Court ruling on third-country deportations?

In June 2025, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could resume expedited deportations of migrants to countries that are not their places of origin, known as third countries, with minimal notice. This includes deportations to South Sudan, the youngest country in the world and one of the poorest, which has experienced repeated bouts of violence since gaining independence from Sudan in 2011. The court’s decision came after a federal judge ruled in April that the government had violated migrants’ due process rights and blocked them from being sent to third countries unless they have a “meaningful opportunity” to contest their removal.

The ruling supports the administration’s efforts to strike agreements with other countries for them to accept U.S. deportees. According to a New York Times review of U.S. government documents, the administration has asked, or plans to ask, nearly sixty countries to take deportees who are not their citizens. Many of these countries, most of which are in Africa, are subject to a new full or partial travel ban to the United States, or are being considered for one.

What has been the response to Trump’s deportations?

Migrants often head to the United States to flee poverty, violence, political instability, and other hardships, and experts say many countries are unprepared to accept them back.

Some recipient countries have likely agreed to take U.S. deportees because they are facing economic and political pressure from the Trump administration. “They’re powerless to do anything,” Chatham House’s Christopher Sabatini told the New York Times in February. “And we saw with President [Gustavo] Petro of Colombia the consequences if you resist: sanctions against diplomatic personnel, loss of visa rights, as well as tariffs.” In late January, Colombia blocked two military aircraft carrying U.S. deportees from landing in the country, but later walked back its position after Trump threatened steep retaliatory tariffs on Colombian imports.

Domestically, the Trump administration’s deportation agenda has faced pushback. Legal experts say the White House’s policies lack transparency and have questioned the administration’s authority to deport migrants without due process, while several rights groups have filed lawsuits. In April, the Trump administration said in a legal filing that it made an “administrative error” in transferring a Maryland man to prison in his home country of El Salvador the month prior, but that it could not ensure his return given he was no longer in U.S. custody. The man, Kilmar Ábrego García, was returned to the United States in June but awaits trial on human smuggling charges. Meanwhile, legal debates continue about the use of the Alien Enemies Act during peaceful times to bypass conventional immigration law. 

Ellora Onion-De and Jacqueline Metzler contributed to this In Brief. Will Merrow created the map.