From Scripps News, “Numbers show no mass deportation of migrants, despite Trump immigration crackdown”:

A pledge to deport millions of undocumented immigrants helped propel President Donald Trump back to the White House.

“It’s going to be called a Trump mass deportation,” Trump said during a campaign rally on Aug. 12, 2024. “We will begin the largest deportation operation in American history.”

[…] But federal data shows there has not been a significant jump in immigrants deported since Trump took office. Mass deportations have not occurred. The numbers show removals are lagging behind levels during the Biden administration.

“Frankly I was shocked,” said Sue Long, co-founder of the nonpartisan Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse that tracks immigration statistics at Syracuse University.

Early on the Trump administration touted the number of daily immigration arrests but has never shared detailed deportation figures.

Long was able to calculate recent deportation figures using a cumulative number deep inside a spreadsheet ICE is required by law to keep updated for Congress.

“They’re lower,” Long said. “Their daily average is simply 10 percent lower.”

I would be shocked if mass deportations actually were happening as it’d be one of the first times in my lifetime that the government was actually executing the will of the people.

Trump’s actions — from his focus on deporting critics of Israel for their political speech to threatening to send American citizens to maximum security prisons in El Salvador — actually seem calculated to lessen support for mass deportations.

The acknowledgement that deporting some El Salvadoran illegal immigrant to El Salvador was an “administrative error” and then the reversal to insisting he’s an MS-13 gang member was also bizarre.

Polls have repeatedly found the overwhelming majority of Americans want all illegal aliens deported but instead they’re being allowed to stay because Trump thinks that “We need more people.”