Deportations of U.S. citizens in the second Trump administration

During the second presidency of Donald Trump, federal immigration enforcement policies and operations have resulted in the documented arrest, death, detention, and removal of American citizens. As of October 2025, the U.S. government was not tracking the number of detained or missing citizens, but ProPublica confirmed at least 170 citizen detentions by that time. The deportation of U.S. citizens from the United States is illegal.

High-profile detention cases of American citizens include arrests of elected officials, disabled adults and children, and Puerto Rican and Indigenous people. Donald Trump has voiced support for the denaturalization of American citizens and the detainment of citizens in foreign prisons noted for human rights abuses.

Congressional Democrats have challenged the Trump administration to justify the detention of U.S. citizens and have been blocked by the Trump administration from investigating, passing laws limiting abuses, or overseeing immigration actions affecting U.S. citizens. President Trump, other Republicans, and administration officials alternately confirmed, defended, and denied reports of American citizens being arrested, deported, and detained. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was confirmed by independent review and U.S. judges to have violated laws including the Immigration Act of 1990 by interrogating and detaining people without warrants or review of their citizenship status.

The Trump administration's treatment of U.S. citizens has raised concerns among civil rights advocates. Some activists have compared the impact of ICE on American citizens to concentration camps such as Manzanar, where Japanese-Americans were interned during World War II. Between 110,000 and 120,000 U.S. citizens were imprisoned by the U.S. government during the internment of Japanese Americans for political reasons from 1942 to 1945. The Cato Institute called Trump's immigration policies damaging to American interests. Legal and immigration experts have stated that these legal violations were caused by Trump administration pressure to deport people quickly without safeguards.