Tracking Mass Deportation by the Numbers, Not Smoke and Mirrors

“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

The not-so-ethereal Wizard infamously demands this in the 1939 classic film The Wizard of Oz, directed by Victor Fleming and based on the 1900 novel by Frank Baum.

In this climactic cinema moment, Dorothy and her companions realize that the Wizard is not all that he seems when, despite the smoke, mirrors, giant floating green head, and pyrotechnics, Toto pulls back the green curtain with his teeth to expose a very regular human at a complex switchboard of gadgets.

Recently, this spectacle seems familiar.

Following promises of mass deportations of illegal immigrants by Immigration & Customs Enforcement, the White House apparently is flooding social media platforms with disinformation.

Recent media reports that the U.S. government has been falsely creating the appearance of current enhanced immigration enforcement with thousands of archived press releases about ICE arrests --some decades old-- were given new time stamps: January 24, 2025.

This algorithmic funny business sends them to the top of browsers when people Google “ICE raids,” leading to terror and disinformation in immigrant communities.

As a political scientist teaching a university course on U.S.-Mexico Border Politics, I understand that historically and currently, most efforts to “control” migration have contained elements of illusion and statistical sleight of hand.

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The truth can still be illuminated by studying history, exploring non-partisan sources of data and facts, double-checking information, and refusing to spread disinformation and fear.

During the campaign for “Mexican Repatriation” during the Great Depression in the 1930s under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, due to economic desperation in the U.S., strong anti-Mexican sentiment existed among many Americans. Added to the labor needs in Mexico, the U.S. and Mexican governments agreed to a pressure campaign to “return” Mexicans living in the U.S. to Mexico.

While the U.S. government estimated the number of Mexicans removed to be in the millions and touted this number in the media, University of California-Los Angeles historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez argues the number is more accurately around 400,000 people. This means the vast majority of Mexicans resisted removal despite enormous pressure.

Decades later, “Operation Wetback” in 1954 (the official title itself a slur against Mexicans) was a mass deportation effort after the end of World War II when returning U.S. GIs created less of a demand for labor to sustain the U.S. food chain.

The U.S. government claimed to have removed over a million unauthorized Mexican workers. However, Hernandez estimates that the number was closer to 300,000. She observes that after the U.S. government declared the operation a success, they changed tactics by reducing border enforcers to two-man patrols to demonstrate a precipitous drop in apprehensions.

The numbers the U.S. government keeps about immigration enforcement in more recent decades reveal numbers that do not comport with the “invasion” narrative. Considering that some people cross the U.S.-Mexico border to move to Mexico, there was net zero immigration between the U.S. and Mexico between 2005-2010, and around 130,000 Mexican nationals living in the U.S. between 2009-2014, according to Pew Research Center.

Claiming “border chaos” does not always correspond with a chaotic border. When President Donald Trump first took office in 2017 after running on an explicitly anti-Mexican, anti-immigrant message, unauthorized border crossings were at a low point. Some argued this was precisely because of Trump’s tough rhetoric, but 2017 also appears to be part of a two-decade trend.

Reliable data are available, but they require attention to detail. In a thorough video breakdown, USA Facts describes how Customs and Border Patrol (CPB) collects and shares data related to authorized and unauthorized annual immigration.

“Unauthorized immigrants,” according to the government, include those who crossed into the U.S. illegally and were apprehended, visa overstayers but also people seeking asylum, those pre-approved for temporary protective status due to humanitarian crises, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients.

A portion of those in the “unauthorized” category have been or are being processed for legal residence --at least temporarily. Due to large refugee and asylum flows from places like Ukraine and Venezuela, people from places other than Mexico were the majority of unauthorized immigrants for many years over the last decade. Additionally, families traveling together tripled between 2020 and 2024.

Certainly, the problem is not just rhetorical disinformation. These tactics harm real people. Historically and today, the demand for foreign labor and the intense push factors that lead people to make the difficult decision to leave their homeland reproduce a situation of a large population living in the shadows without documentation or authorization.

Unauthorized immigrants are subject to unlivable wages, exploitation, blackmail, crime victimization, and poor health and safety. Deportation efforts, including workplace raids or neighborhood sweeps by ICE, terrorize immigrant communities. A Pew Research Center survey from 2022 shows that almost 40% percent of U.S. Latinos said they were worried a family member would be deported.

Detainees and deportees continue to face dehumanizing conditions at the hands of the state. Deportations crush dreams and tear families apart. Still, past efforts at mass deportation have never successfully removed this population. Despite many changes to policy, the Department of Homeland Security estimates of the total unauthorized immigrant population have remained flat since 2010.

While it is not possible for everyone to take a 15-week college course on U.S. immigration policy, it is advisable to seek primary and non-partisan sources of data, research immigration history, and double-check information before sharing it on social media to help anyone be better informed about immigration realities.

For those who are understandably scared, it is important for them to know their rights and learn the lessons of history. Everyone needs to resist the sensationalism of immigration optics and pay attention to the truth, not the man behind the curtain.

Isabel Skinner is an assistant professor in the School of Politics and International Affairs at the University of Illinois Springfield and a Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project.