The Trump Administration has deported more than 400,000 immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally, using measures that have changed the landscape of law enforcement and immigration policy.
According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), over two million illegal immigrants have been deported or have “self-deported” as of September 2025. Government figures estimate 1.6 million people have willingly left the United States.
“It is interesting that so many leave on their own considering the treacherous journey they took to get here,” said sophomore Logan Gladstone.
The administration’s goal was to deport 1,000,000 immigrants who have entered illegally within a year. There have been numerous limits to its abilities including budget restraints, administration, diplomatic (with other countries) and legal challenges.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which has been the force tasked with executing Trump’s plan, has a budget of around $9 billion. This budget is not sufficient to fund all deportations or ICE’s other focuses, like cybercrime, immigration related crime and drug trafficking.
To solve this, the military has sealed the border to prevent new border crossings and are using bases to house detainees.
The Trump Administration has also eliminated the sensitive location policy, which made arrests harder in schools, hospitals and places of worship.
Sophomore Remy Friedberg said, “I think it’s unfair to sneak up on people and attack them, whatever the crime, especially in places they consider the most safe. These sensitive locations are supposed to be safe for everyone; it sets a dangerous precedent.”
Part of the diplomatic effort has been forcing other countries to accept the migrants who left their countries. However, legal, diplomatic and political challenges have arisen from rare cases of people being sent to countries that they are not from.
Earlier in the year, the United States imposed a 25 percent tariff on Colombia because it denied entry to the military planes carrying migrants.
Many states and civil rights groups have filed lawsuits against President Trump’s ban on birthright citizenship (meaning someone born in the United States is automatically a citizen) regarding children of illegal immigrants.
A major change is that city-wide raids have become more common and more publicized.
Another change is that advertisements, either encouraging Americans to join ICE or undocumented immigrants to self-deport, have become much more common.
Part of the encouragement of Americans to join ICE is also the quality base salary and partial college debt relief.
The campaign portrays illegal immigrants as criminals, with some advertisements using the words, “rapists,” “murderers” and “gang members.”
“ICE should be doing their job but they shouldn’t be producing propaganda that uses dangerous stereotypes,” said a GOA sophomore.
There have been debates over the legality and morality of certain new policies, including stripping around 350,000 Venezuelans of their rights to legally reside and work in the United States despite being undocumented.
Another GOA sophomore said, “Although it may be morally wrong to deport all these people, it doesn’t look like what Trump is doing is illegal. It just seems like he’s setting a new and more iron-fisted precedent for Presidential power.”
