The Trump administration has stepped up apprehensions of suspected illegal immigrants considerably in recent weeks, and the federal government has expanded its deportation efforts well beyond targeting the criminal aliens who were the primary focal point during the campaign. The administration has instead turned to raiding job sites and other areas where immigrants are known to be found, in hopes of further increasing total apprehension numbers.
But even as the administration and ICE further expand these efforts, the administration is unlikely to succeed in carrying out deportations at levels seen during the Bush or Clinton years, or even what was seen during the Obama years.
Part of this is due to the fact that the administration has effectively closed the border, and so there are fewer apprehensions to be made near and around the border itself. These apprehensions are presumably “low-hanging fruit,” so to speak, for agents. This means that ICE agents will have to do much more work—not a favorite activity for government employees—and look to neighborhoods and the private sector to find and apprehend potential illegal aliens.
Another factor bringing down total numbers of deportations may be the rise of so-called sanctuary cities which limit state and local agencies in offering cooperation or coordination with federal agents.
But whatever the cause, it is clear that there are presently significant practical and/or political barriers to sizable increases in border enforcement in recent years, compared to the 1980s and 1990s.
If the administration has any hopes of putting a large dent in the number of illegal aliens currently in the United States, it is going to need to focus on encouraging self-deportation, rather than rely on sending agents into communities to round up suspected illegal aliens. After all, it’s one thing to target for deportation violent criminals and unemployed “refugees” living off of taxpayer-funded debit cards. It’s something else to target private employers, private-sector workers, and longtime peaceful residents with existing social and economic networks in the community. Targeting these latter groups is more likely to garner pushback against the administration from existing residents and citizens. This will further slow down the administration’s stated efforts to maximize deportations.
The State of Deportation Efforts
NBC news recently reported the latest deportation numbers coming out of the Trump administration. According to the report, “In April, the latest month for which the data is available, ICE deported over 17,200 people, an increase of about 29% compared with April 2024, when over 13,300 were deported.”
April’s numbers may represent an increase over the previous year, but, these are small numbers in historical context. The NBC story continues: “Even deporting more than 17,200 people in a single month does not put President Donald Trump on track to make good on his Inauguration Day promise to deport ‘millions and millions.’ In fact, 17,200 deportations per month is less than half the pace it would take to reach the record number of 430,000 deportations in a single year, set under former President Barack Obama in 2013.”
In fact, Trump will have to more than double the current pace of deportations to match his first term when the administration deported 2 million people. Nor were deportations particularly high during the first Trump administration. For example, during the first Obama term, the US government deported more than 3.1 million people. During the first Bush administration, there were more than 4.7 million deportations. And there were more than 6.7 million during the second Clinton term.
At April’s pace, the Trump administration will not get anywhere near these numbers by the end of his term. Even if the administration hits Stephen Miller’s stated goal of 3,000 apprehensions a day—and assuming all of those end in deportations—we’re still looking at fewer than 4 million deportations by the end of Trump’s term.
It will be difficult to even match the deportation numbers of the Biden administration. This is not because the Biden White House was particularly rigorous in its deportations. Rather, the relatively large deportation numbers under Biden were fostered by an extremely large amount of overall immigration, both legal and illegal. That is, the large inflow of migrants made it fairly easy for the Biden administration to deport what amounted to a relatively small percentage of new immigrants.
The Trump administration states that its planned large budget increases for hiring more ICE agents and private contractors, and expanding detention capability, will allow the administration to deport one million people per year. In other words, that’s still just four million deportations total and the best case scenario—from the administration’s perspective—under current goals.
That would only put the administration back to near where the Bush administration was more than a decade ago. Moreover, this is in the context of current immigration numbers, and the administration’s supporters tell us that there are currently more than 18 million illegal aliens in the United States as of early 2025. So, the administration’s best-case scenario would mean the administration has few hopes of deporting even a quarter of the existing population of illegal immigrants.
It is true, of course, that total in-migration is now much smaller than under Biden, and net migration is probably negative now. However, this also means that the “easy targets” for deportation are far less numerous now than was the case under Biden. Now, tracking down illegal aliens—many of whom have found employment and housing—will require more work on the part of federal agents. Moreover, the only way to reach the huge deportation targets of the current administration is to gain extensive cooperation from state and local officials. Thanks to the growth of sanctuary city legislation, the administration is unlikely to get that.
The Cost of Immigration Enforcement
Not all types of immigration enforcement are created equal. Some are laissez-faire, and respect the property rights of everyone. Others are various types of government regulation. But, some types of enforcement are definitely worse than others.
The most laissez-faire types of immigration enforcement, of course, are those that actually make government smaller. These strategies include cutting off immigrants from “public” taxpayer funded services, social benefits, public school access, and government loans (including GSE-backed loans, FHA insurance, etc.) Another laissez-faire option is to refrain from extending citizenship rights, thus lowering the perceived political benefits of immigration. This includes abolishing birthright citizenship, Moreover, policies ought to be adopted through which residents who attempt to steal from the taxpayers by applying for public benefits will be deported as a consequence of this attempted fraud.
Relatively laissez-faire options include the use of physical barriers—i.e., walls—to prevent entry of migrants who have not been invited by existing residents or employers. Another option is to deny to that same group the use of public roads and highways to enter the country.
The worst type of immigration enforcement is the type that interferes in private contracts and regulates the private sector, complete with significant punishments for peaceful economic activity.
Unfortunately, these latter strategies are often favored by anti-immigration activists. They include punishing owners of real estate for renting or selling real estate to illegal aliens. A commonly used strategy is imposing legal sanctions on private employers who hire undocumented workers
These strategies are most objectionable, and most likely to raise political opposition, when the employers and workers who are targeted are not known to have committed any “crime” except not having the correct government paperwork.
These latter cases are no different from any other government act which insinuates the government between two consenting parties who have entered into a contract. Instead of allowing this private agreement to go unmolested, federal agents—the enforcement arm of a federal regulatory agency—will swoop in and declare these contracts null and void.
This imposes real costs on American entrepreneurs and employers who are only minding their own business. Indeed, the cost of this style of immigration enforcement is so evident that even Donald Trump has signaled he plans to back off, and has reiterated the administration’s commitment to targeting actual criminals. In a June 12 Truth Social post he wrote:
Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace. In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs...
This is essentially Trump distancing himself for the less popular aspects of his immigration enforcement agenda—i.e., rounding up peaceful workers with established local economic ties—and instead emphasizing the very popular part, which is the commitment to deport actual criminals.
We might also note that the difference between targeting criminals and targeting workers is the difference between a public-safety policy and your run-of-the-mill policy designed to regulate the private sector. Calls for cracking down on the private sector for employing the “wrong” people, after all, are nothing more than the usual special interest group politics with one group demanding economic regulation to favor one segment of the population over another.
Self-Deportation Is the Most Reasonable Option
As the numbers show, the Trump administration simply is not going to deport even half of the 18 million illegal aliens in the United States via apprehensions by federal agents. Moreover, if the administration succeeds in deporting the violent, criminal illegal aliens, that will increasingly leave the peaceful immigrants. If the administration also succeeds in ensuring that illegal aliens cannot collect taxpayer funded social benefits of any kind, that will then leave mostly only the productive aliens. The removal of pathways to citizenship for illegal aliens will further winnow down illegal alien immigration to those content with being non-political, non-citizen residents.
Beyond that, efforts to forcibly remove the peaceful, productive aliens will antagonize the private sector and people minding their own business. To actually remove a majority of the 18 million or so illegal immigrants would require an huge increase in federal police power and an enormous expansion of federal meddling in the everyday operations of countless private residential areas and countless private employers.
While MAGA activists may not have any problem with this sort of thing, it’s likely that much of the population in such cases—will find it tiring to be incessantly asked to prove one’s citizenship and provide “papeles” as federal agents roam parking lots and apartment complexes looking to round up one more mechanic or janitor who hasn’t filled out the right government forms.
This is why efforts to encourage self-deportation are so important. After all, reducing federal programs for social benefits is always good, regardless of its effect on immigration. Moreover, the more immigrants are cut off from the public purse, and from citizenship benefits overall, the less relevant they will be to political life. Those immigrants looking for a free payday, or looking to get access to the American voting booth, will have to look elsewhere to exploit the local population. Many illegal aliens will elect to stay, of course. But, only those who are able to be support themselves economically—either individually or as a family unit—will be able to make a go of it. In this respect, they’d be no different from generations of earlier immigrants who arrived before the advent of the welfare state.