Most deportees under Trump are men, leaving women to care for families alone
The Trump administration’s vast deportation effort has led to the removal of an unusually high number of undocumented men who have lived and worked in the United States for years, according to a Washington Post analysis, upending the livelihoods and routines of scores of families.
Men account for nine out of every 10 people who have been deported by federal immigration officers since President Donald Trump began his second term last year. That ratio is not new: Women have historically represented a smaller share of those in detention, even as rising numbers of families have arrived in recent years.
But the characteristics of the men being taken into custody have changed, and the number of detainees has skyrocketed.
The Post’s analysis of Immigration and Customs Enforcement data shows that almost a quarter of the 300,000 men removed since January 2025 had lived in the United States for at least three years. In the last year of the Biden administration, less than a 10th of all deported men had been in the country for that long before they were removed.
The share of those removed who have criminal convictions also has shifted significantly. Most of those deported in the decade before Trump took office again had been convicted of a crime. Now the reverse is true: Nearly two-thirds of the men removed since the start of the second Trump administration do not have criminal convictions.
Administration officials have said that the Department of Homeland Security is targeting criminals but will arrest anyone who is in the country illegally. A DHS spokesperson asserted that many of the detained immigrants who are listed as “non-criminals” have records in other countries. The agency provided five examples of recently arrested men who fit that profile but did not answer a follow-up question on how many detained men in total have criminal records abroad.
Trying to survive
Francia became her family’s sole provider after her husband’s arrest. The Venezuelan asylee is struggling to manage a 12-hour delivery shift and mounting bills.
With the large number of men being removed, in many cases, women have been left to provide for their families on their own. In interviews with The Post, three women and one man described how an ICE arrest has transformed their families. All spoke of disastrous emotional and financial repercussions.
“It rips apart the fabric of the family,” said Regina Langhout, a psychology professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz who has published studies about the effects of deportation on families. “The material and psychological effects can be felt years and years later.”
For decades, single Mexican men comprised the majority of migrants entering the country illegally and being expelled across the border. But in the mid-2010s, soaring numbers of women and families began crossing and seeking asylum or overstaying visas. Recent studies indicate that nearly half of all undocumented immigrants in the U.S. are female.
The share of women being deported rose in the final two years of the Biden administration but declined to traditional levels after Trump took office.
Becoming a mother, alone
A.A. found her future husband in Chicago after long journeys from Kazakhstan. His arrest means navigating motherhood without him.
ICE has expanded the reach of its enforcement efforts over the last year. In raids across the nation, immigration officers targeted places such as construction sites and car washes. They also focused on specific groups of people, such as commercial truck drivers. Those efforts widely resulted in the arrests of men, who more frequently work in those industries.
Detention imposes financial burdens on families, from lost income and attorney fees.
‘Decaying’ in detention
Juan was given protection from deportation after arriving as a child. Now he’s trying to make peace with being in detention.
A September 2015 report from the Urban Institute and the Migration Policy Institute found that family income dropped an average of 70 percent during the six months after the arrest of a parent and that “fathers are generally the family breadwinners,” indicated by the relatively low labor force participation of Hispanic immigrant mothers.
When a father is deported, immigrant families are likely to be more reliant on public assistance or charity, the report found.
Langhout said her studies show the deportation-related financial losses result in food insecurity, housing instability and less time for parenting for the mother or father left behind. Families stop going to PTA meetings, the park and all other places where communities build connections.
“It sickens our entire society,” she said.
Women banding together
Roxana’s partner has a past that made him a target for ICE. She discovered a network of women like herself in trying to free him.
The most recent available ICE data indicates that arrest numbers have dropped. But they still dwarf figures from previous years. As of early March, ICE officers were arresting about 933 people a day. That number is three times as high as the average daily arrest figure in 2024.
“They are being more discreet,” said Gabriel Salguero, a pastor and president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, “but just as devastating.”
Methodology
To measure removals before the second Trump administration, reporters combined two datasets that the Deportation Data Project obtained from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The first spanned from October 2011 through September 2023. The second covered late 2023 through July 2025 and was filtered until the end of the Biden administration. Duplicate records were removed.
To get removals for the first 15 months of the second Trump administration, The Post couldn’t solely rely on the most recent version of ICE’s removals dataset, because its numbers don’t match previous releases of that data. Instead, reporters used individual-level detention data cleaned by the Deportation Data Project, focusing on individuals marked as “removed,” “voluntary departure” and “voluntary return,” and anyone who had a departure date. In all, The Post found more than 360,000 people who have been removed from the country since the start of the second Trump administration.
Using those individuals’ unique identification number, The Post pulled additional information — including country of origin, birth year and gender, as well as when they came to the U.S. and when they were removed — from the latest removals dataset, which spans through March.
The Post used the date of entry and departure date to calculate time spent in the country. Date-of-entry details are missing for about a quarter of all removals — ranging from 12 percent in 2024 to 41 percent in 2026. While The Post identified 50,000 men with no criminal convictions who had been in the country for at least three years and were deported under the second Trump administration, that figure is an undercount because of the missing values.
About this story
Editing by Christine Armario. Photo editing by Christine Nguyen. Copy editing by Shibani Shah. Video editing by Sarah Parnass and Mariana Trujillo Valdes. Data editing by Meghan Hoyer. Design editing by Virginia Singarayar. Design and development by Junne Joaquin Alcantara.
