Heritage report blasts Trump's record on deportations
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The Heritage Foundation, the think tank behind Project 2025, says in a report out Friday that the Trump administration is "significantly off pace" on mass deportations.
Why it matters: This is an attack from the right. "The American people voted for mass deportations. They're getting mass communications instead," the report's author Mike Howell tells Axios.
The big picture: President Trump promised to carry out the largest mass deportation campaign since the Eisenhower administration.
- Howell writes that the Department of Homeland Security's focus on people with serious criminal records — what Trump now calls the "worst of the worst" — was the agenda of past Democratic presidents.
- Back in the 1950s, the Eisenhower administration targeted Mexican immigrants for deportations. More than one million people left the country in 1954 through a mix of deportations and voluntary departures.
- The Eisenhower-era record, Howell writes, stemmed from its more indiscriminate enforcement against undocumented people, including those working in the agriculture sector.
Zoom in: Howell, a former Homeland Security official in the first Trump administration, criticizes the lack of data being shared by DHS to back up its claims that 600,000 deportations will be carried out by the end of the year.
- Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the main agency responsible for these removals, has stopped publishing the monthly data to show this progress. There hasn't been a monthly release since Trump took office.
- "Without access to the data, it is impossible to ascertain how the DHS is supporting its varying claims of deportation and self-deportation numbers," the report says.
The other side: Other agencies involved in immigration policy have been sharing stats, such as records of immigration court hearings released by the Department of Justice and the number of border crossings shared by Customs and Border Protection.
- DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Axios: "This is just the beginning. … In the face of a historic number of injunctions from activist judges and threats to law enforcement, DHS, ICE and CBP, have not just closed the border, but made historic strides to carry out President Trump's promise of arresting and deporting illegal aliens who have invaded our country."
- White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told Axios: "The Trump Administration is delivering on the President's promise ... Despite an unprecedented number of legal challenges and unlawful rulings by lower courts, the deportations will continue."
The bottom line: Howell argues that the administration needs to change course to meet its campaign promises and that it has the funding necessary to do so, thanks to the "big, beautiful bill."
