ICE Has Deported at Least 70 U.S. Citizens.
ICE Has Deported at Least 70 U.S. Citizens.
GAO confirms ICE deported U.S. citizens due to systemic failures — and the agency still doesn’t know how many more it’s wrongly targeting.
Migrantinsider.com
Jun 23, 2025
WASHINGTON — A recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) confirms what immigrant advocates have long warned: ICE has deported American citizens.
Between 2015 and 2020, ICE deported at least 70 people who were U.S. citizens, according to the GAO. That’s not just a bureaucratic mistake — it’s a constitutional violation.
U.S. citizens cannot be deported under civil immigration law. Yet GAO found that ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) lack the records to even know how many people they may have deported in error.
In total, the watchdog found that ICE arrested 674 potential U.S. citizens, detained 121, and deported 70 — all of whom may have been legally untouchable by immigration enforcement.
And the actual number could be much higher.
“ICE does not know the extent to which its officers are taking enforcement actions against individuals who could be U.S. citizens,” the GAO concluded.
Training Gaps, Broken Databases, and Zero Accountability
According to the report, ICE’s own systems — both human and digital — are fundamentally flawed.
First, ICE’s internal training is a mess. Officers are technically required to consult with supervisors before questioning someone who claims to be a citizen. But ICE’s training materials contradict that rule, telling officers they can act alone — a gap that leaves life-altering decisions in the hands of under-trained agents.
Second, ICE’s data infrastructure makes misidentification permanent. Officers are supposed to document citizenship investigations, but they aren’t required to update a person’s status in ICE databases, even after confirming U.S. citizenship.
The result: people who are U.S. citizens can stay marked as “removable” in ICE’s system indefinitely.
Thousands Wrongly Targeted, Some Detained for Years
A separate analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse found that between 2002 and 2017, ICE wrongly flagged at least 2,840 U.S. citizens as potentially deportable. At least 214 of those Americans were taken into ICE custody.
In the most harrowing case, Davino Watson, a New York-born citizen, was detained for three years in an Alabama immigration jail. He had no lawyer and was forced to prove his citizenship status to the government alone. When he finally got out, an appeals court ruled he wasn’t owed a dime — the statute of limitations had expired.
A Pattern of Profiling
Underlying these errors is a deeper problem: racial profiling.
Both ICE and CBP have long been documented engaging in discriminatory enforcement practices, disproportionately targeting people of color. As a result, Black and brown U.S. citizens are more likely to be stopped, arrested, or even deported — despite having every legal right to remain.
Without access to free legal counsel — a protection immigrants are not guaranteed — many citizens caught up in the system are left defenseless.
Mistakes ICE Refuses to Fix
What’s perhaps most disturbing is the lack of systemic response. 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 result? A system that treats constitutional rights as optional — and a deportation machine that can’t (or won’t) tell the difference between an immigrant and an American.
GAO confirms ICE deported U.S. citizens due to systemic failures — and the agency still doesn’t know how many more it’s wrongly targeting.
Migrantinsider.com
Jun 23, 2025
WASHINGTON — A recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) confirms what immigrant advocates have long warned: ICE has deported American citizens.
Between 2015 and 2020, ICE deported at least 70 people who were U.S. citizens, according to the GAO. That’s not just a bureaucratic mistake — it’s a constitutional violation.
U.S. citizens cannot be deported under civil immigration law. Yet GAO found that ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) lack the records to even know how many people they may have deported in error.
In total, the watchdog found that ICE arrested 674 potential U.S. citizens, detained 121, and deported 70 — all of whom may have been legally untouchable by immigration enforcement.
And the actual number could be much higher.
“ICE does not know the extent to which its officers are taking enforcement actions against individuals who could be U.S. citizens,” the GAO concluded.
Training Gaps, Broken Databases, and Zero Accountability
According to the report, ICE’s own systems — both human and digital — are fundamentally flawed.
First, ICE’s internal training is a mess. Officers are technically required to consult with supervisors before questioning someone who claims to be a citizen. But ICE’s training materials contradict that rule, telling officers they can act alone — a gap that leaves life-altering decisions in the hands of under-trained agents.
Second, ICE’s data infrastructure makes misidentification permanent. Officers are supposed to document citizenship investigations, but they aren’t required to update a person’s status in ICE databases, even after confirming U.S. citizenship.
The result: people who are U.S. citizens can stay marked as “removable” in ICE’s system indefinitely.
Thousands Wrongly Targeted, Some Detained for Years
A separate analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse found that between 2002 and 2017, ICE wrongly flagged at least 2,840 U.S. citizens as potentially deportable. At least 214 of those Americans were taken into ICE custody.
In the most harrowing case, Davino Watson, a New York-born citizen, was detained for three years in an Alabama immigration jail. He had no lawyer and was forced to prove his citizenship status to the government alone. When he finally got out, an appeals court ruled he wasn’t owed a dime — the statute of limitations had expired.
A Pattern of Profiling
Underlying these errors is a deeper problem: racial profiling.
Both ICE and CBP have long been documented engaging in discriminatory enforcement practices, disproportionately targeting people of color. As a result, Black and brown U.S. citizens are more likely to be stopped, arrested, or even deported — despite having every legal right to remain.
Without access to free legal counsel — a protection immigrants are not guaranteed — many citizens caught up in the system are left defenseless.
Mistakes ICE Refuses to Fix
What’s perhaps most disturbing is the lack of systemic response. 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 result? A system that treats constitutional rights as optional — and a deportation machine that can’t (or won’t) tell the difference between an immigrant and an American.
