Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials deported fewer people during President Donald Trump’s first full month in office than they did over the same period last year under the Biden administration.
According to ICE data obtained by NBC News, more than 11,000 migrants were deported in February compared to just over 12,000 during the same month last year, largely because the number of border crossers has plummeted to record lows after Trump suspended refugee admissions on his first day back in office.
At the end of February, a federal judge ordered the government to restore the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program suspended by Trump while the court considered the merits of a lawsuit. The Trump administration also relaunched the Biden-era CBP One app for booking asylum appointments into a MAGAfied version called CBP Home.
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The latest numbers continue to show that the Trump administration is falling short of the president’s long-promised largest deportation blitz in U.S. history.
One immigration metric where Trump is outperforming Biden, however, is in the number of ICE arrests.
The Department of Homeland Security said over 20,000 migrants were arrested during Trump’s first month in office, a 111% increase from the average monthly arrests during the last fiscal year. Hundreds have already been released from ICE detention due to space constraints.
Though border czar Tom Homan has said the administration’s deportation policy is “worst first,” meaning those with a criminal history are the first to go, roughly half of the people deported in February did not have criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, according to NBC.
The number of migrants without criminal records arrested by ICE and deported also rose slightly to 390 in February from 223 in December, the data reportedly showed. ICE is also holding 10% more detainees under Trump, with 44,000 migrants detained at the end of February.
Former ICE chief of staff Jason Houser told NBC that arrests are “just the beginning” and do not immediately lead to deportation: “Every ICE removal requires a legal case, court rulings, potential arrest, detention space, transport logistics, diplomatic approvals and coordination across agencies.”
Homan declared on Monday that even migrants who are in the U.S. legally can “absolutely” be deported by the Trump administration.
“Absolutely we can,” Homan told Fox Business Network’s Stuart Varney. “Did he violate the terms of his visa? Did he violate the terms of his residency here, you know, committing crimes, attacking Israeli students, locking down buildings, destroying property? Absolutely, any resident alien who commits a crime is eligible for deportation.”
Homan issued the statement after Trump confirmed that ICE arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian green card holder who led pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University last year.
“We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X.
But Kelli Stump, the president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said only an immigration judge has the power to revoke a green card.
“The government bears the burden of proving the reason that this person is deportable from the United States,” he told NPR. “And then just depending on what ground we’re looking at, that’s where the fight ensues.”
