US President Donald Trump has deported 37,660 people in his first month in office, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security, Reuters reported, quoted by BTA.
The agency notes that this is well below the monthly average of 57,000 deportations and returns in the last year of Joe Biden's administration.
A senior Trump administration official and experts have suggested that deportations are likely to increase in the coming months, as the US president has taken new measures to increase the number of arrests and returns.
Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said that the number of Biden-era deportations appear to be "artificially inflated" due to high levels of illegal immigration.
Trump promised during his election campaign to deport millions of illegal immigrants in the largest deportation operation in history. But initial data suggests he will struggle to match the high deportation rates of the final year of Biden's administration, when large numbers of illegal immigrants were caught crossing the border illegally, making them easier to deport.
Trump's push to deport illegal immigrants could take months, aided by agreements with Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama and Costa Rica to accept migrants from those countries, Reuters sources said.
The U.S. military has helped with more than a dozen military flights to deport illegal immigrants to Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Ecuador, Peru and India. The Trump administration has also flown Venezuelan migrants to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. The US president said late last month that his government would prepare to detain up to 30,000 illegal immigrants at the base in Cuba despite criticism from human rights groups.