If the White House wants to achieve its goal of one million deportations per year, it has to streamline the currently bogged down system of interior arrests through deportation of non-criminals. Here in a nutshell is why ICE -driven deportations are so low – at an average rate of about 18 per ICE enforcement and deportation staff person (7,700).
The Trump administration inherited an interior arrest and deportation process, run by ICE, which was very bogged down, and the immigration courts, seriously under-staffed. (Customs and Border Patrol generally cover arrests and deportation within 100 miles of the border and can use expedited removals).
Interior immigration enforcement under the aegis of ICE shrank over the past fifteen years, while the overall deportation machinery shifted to the border. ICE once removed an average of 155,000 people per year from inside the United States during 2009–2016, but that number fell to 81,000 in 2017–2020 and then dropped again to about 38,000 annually from 2021–2024.
The difficulties start with the arrest. Most ICE arrests end up in Section 240 immigration-court proceedings because the vast majority of people taken into custody have been in the United States for more than two years, have ties here, or assert some form of protection claim, which legally bars the government from using expedited removal.
Once someone is placed into the 240 track, they receive the full due-process process: notices, master calendar hearings, evidence submissions, and often an asylum or other relief claim that must be adjudicated by an immigration judge. This pushes them into the enormous immigration-court backlog, which by late 2024 had swollen to roughly 3.6 million cases. As a result, a newly-filed case often waits years before a merits hearing, and the person typically lives in the community during that time unless ICE chooses to detain them, assuming beds are available.
The administration is recruiting judges explicitly to increase deportation. Even when a judge ultimately issues a removal order, carrying it out is slow and often unsuccessful. Today roughly 1.5 million people have outstanding removal orders that have not been executed. ICE must physically locate the person, overcome limited detention capacity, and secure cooperation from the destination country. Many countries delay or refuse travel documents, making deportation impossible in practice. China, Cuba, India, and Venezuela routinely refuse or delay accepting returnees.