Dozens of US Citizens Were Deported by ICE Before Trump Started His Second Term: Report

As Americans continue to protest the second Trump administration's strict immigration policies, a newly released government watchdog report revealed that at least 70 documented U.S. citizens were deported between 2015 and 2020.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that toward the end of former President Barack Obama's second term and throughout President Donald Trump's first, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 674 possible U.S. citizens, detained 121 and deported at least 70, though the actual numbers may be higher.

"ICE does not know the extent to which its officers are taking enforcement actions against individuals who could be U.S. citizens," the report revealed.

The problem is systemic, according to Migrant Insider, since "ICE has not implemented a reliable system to track and correct its mistakes."

"Officers continue to make arrests based on outdated records. Supervisors are often left out of citizenship investigations. And there are no effective safeguards to stop this from happening again," the outlet said, pointing to inconsistencies in ICE agents' trainings and rules.

An analysis from the Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse found that between 2002 and 2017, throughout George W. Bush's 8-year term and at the beginning of Obama's, 2,840 U.S. citizens were flagged as deportable and at least 214 of them were detained by ICE.

Davino Watson, a naturalized U.S. citizen living in New York, was wrongfully detained by ICE in 2008 and held until November 2011 without explanation. Although he was initially awarded $82,500 in damages after filing a complaint, an appeals court later ruled he was ineligible for compensation because the statute of limitations expired while he was still in custody, NPR reported at the time.