Ledger · 2024 campaign · № 176
The largest domestic deportation operation in American history
Partial“[paraphrase] We will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history — 15 to 20 million people.”
- Promised
- , Campaign rally, Council Bluffs, Iowa; repeated at nearly every rally through Election Day
- Re-promised
- 100 times with a fresh deadline
- Topic
- Immigration
- Era
- 2024 campaign
What happened
Removals rose but fell far short of the scale promised and of the 1 million-a-year target. DHS claimed 605,000 deportations from Jan. 20, 2025 to Dec. 10, 2025, while the Deportation Data Project counted roughly 350,000. Trump's second term averaged about 14,700 deportations a month, well under the roughly 36,000 monthly average of Obama's second term. PolitiFact rated the promise Stalled in January 2026.