(José Niño, Headline USA) When President Donald Trump promised the “largest deportation operation in American history,” border cities across Mexico mobilized for a crisis. Local governments declared emergencies, federal authorities constructed shelters for thousands of anticipated deportees, and officials described the mood as a “zombie apocalypse scenario.”
Yet, five months into Trump’s second term, the reality on the ground tells a different story: the shelters are nearly empty, with some facilities mothballed due to low arrivals, according to a report by the Washington Post.
“We really thought we would be inundated,” said Rev. Patrick Murphy, who runs the Casa del Migrante shelter in Piedras Negras. In Tijuana, a party venue was converted into a reception center for up to 2,600 deportees, but the average daily arrivals have hovered around just 38 people. “The reality is, up until now, there haven’t been mass deportations,” confirmed Mónica Vega, the Baja California official overseeing the Tijuana shelter.
The pattern is similar across other border cities. Despite Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement, which has sparked protests in U.S. cities, Mexican officials have been surprised by the low number of deportees.
The empty shelters highlight a striking irony: Trump’s policies have dramatically reduced the northbound flow of migrants by ending U.S. asylum programs and deploying more troops to the border, but this has also dried up the pool of recently arrived, easy-to-deport migrants. As a result, the administration has shifted focus to targeting long-term residents in the U.S. interior.
Precise deportation numbers are hard to verify. The Department of Homeland Security has stopped publishing monthly enforcement data, and independent analysts report that the actual number of removals is well below Trump’s stated goals.
While the administration claims over 239,000 deportations since January, analysts note this is fewer than the same period under President Biden. For perspective, during the five-month period from February through June last year, the Biden administration repatriated 341,060 people
Unless there is a significant increase in internal removal operations, Trump’s will likely far short of the 1 million annual target based on current projections.
As Headline USA has previously reported, the Trump administration has been critiqued by members of the populist Right like former State Rep. Anthony Sabatini, R-FL, who believe the administration is not fulfilling its mass deportations promise.
“Trump has already achieved his objective of closing the border,” said Tonatiuh Guillén, former head of Mexico’s immigration agency. However, the “resistance of communities, the opposition to government policies and the resistance of all kinds of associations—churches, lawyers’ offices—will act as a brake” on large-scale removals, Guillén argued.
Despite the slow start, deportations are beginning to accelerate as new resources come online.
The passage of President Trump’s budget reconciliation bill, officially known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (BBB) or “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” has resulted in an unprecedented increase in ICE funding. The agency’s annual budget has increased from approximately $10 billion to more than $100 billion through 2029.
José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino
