If history is an indicator, Utah’s role in President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to deport undocumented immigrants isn’t likely to be a big part of the national effort, according to federal data.
Gov. Spencer Cox pledged on Tuesday to support the new Trump administration in “deporting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes and pose a threat to public safety.”
But deportions from Utah account for a minuscule portion of those by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Between December 2002 and February 2024, ICE deported 995 immigrants from Utah, according to federal data collected by the Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse, a data gathering and research tool from Syracuse University.
That’s around 0.02% of the 5.5 million ICE deportations during that time.
According to that federal data, the number of deportations dipped significantly since President Joe Biden took office, with 64 people deported since January 2021. That’s four fewer than in 2020 and about half of the 123 individuals deported by ICE in 2018.
On average, ICE has deported two people from Utah a month since January 2021. The average from January 2018 to December 2020 was seven people a month — and as high as 22 in July 2018.
[READ: Utah Gov. Cox plans to help Trump deport undocumented immigrants who commit crimes]
Deportations by ICE also have dropped nationally from more than 200,000 annually in 2018 and 2019 to fewer than 100,000 since 2021 — with the exception of 2023, when the federal agency deported 182,412 people.
The data does not include deportations by Customs and Border Protection — of which there are millions each year — unless an individual was transferred into ICE custody.
One piece of the Republican governor’s five-part plan to aid the Trump administration includes creating additional training and guidance to assist “local and state authorities as they attempt to identify criminal illegal immigrants who should be turned over to [ICE] for deportation proceedings.”
“Federal immigration authorities have failed in their duty to the American people and they’ve left states and localities to independently manage the fallout of those failures,” Cox said in a statement Tuesday. “We’re grateful to have an administration coming in who will take these problems seriously.”
Megan Banta is The Salt Lake Tribune’s data enterprise reporter, a philanthropically supported position. The Tribune retains control over all editorial decisions.
