The US authorities have deported more than 270.000 people in a year, according to official preliminary data released yesterday (Thursday), about a month before Republican Donald Trump, who has threatened to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, returns to power.

The number of deportations – the last of Joe Biden’s presidency – was the highest in a decade, including Trump’s first term (2017-2021).

For the most part, the majority of immigrants who were forced to leave U.S. territory had crossed the border with Mexico illegally, the federal agency in charge of border control and immigration (ICE) said in its annual report.

About a third were facing prosecution or had been convicted by the U.S. justice system for “criminal activity,” according to the document.

These numbers are for the period from early October 2023 to late September 2024, roughly the campaign period. During this campaign period, Donald Trump has (again) turned the issue of illegal immigration into his battle tank.

The mogul has promised to go ahead with the largest deportation operation of illegal immigrants in US history after he returns to the White House on January 20, a threat that is causing intense concern among NGOs that defend immigrants’ rights.

The announcement, based on the unsubstantiated claim that immigrants commit more criminal offenses than U.S. citizens, has proven to be a populist one.

Mr. Trump has not made clear how he will put this policy into practice, and analyses suggest that operations to do so may prove extremely costly and would be unlikely to be effective.

“Every year, our workforce faces giant challenges – but every year, it meets them,” asserted ICE Deputy Director Patrick Lechleitner.

Illegal crossings of the U.S. border have risen sharply since Democratic President Joe Biden took office in early 2021, but have dropped dramatically in the past year after his administration tightened asylum procedures.

There were somewhere around 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. in 2022, according to estimates by the Pew Research Center. Donald Trump and his allies say there are many more.

Many of the undocumented immigrants work and pay taxes in the U.S. They are often unskilled workers.

Critics of the former and future president point out that the U.S. economy would take a hit if immigrants were deported en masse without residency permits, as this would lead to a shortage of labor in agriculture and construction – among other industries.

Economists warn that the labor shortage would push prices up, calling into question another of candidate Trump’s pompous proclamations: that he would drastically reduce inflation.