The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) closed fiscal year 2024 with the highest number of deportations in a decade, report Valerie Gonzalez and Elliot Spagat of the Associated Press. 

A new report shows that ICE removed 271,484 individuals during 2024, nearly double of the deportations registered in fiscal year 2023. The agency said that the numbers reflect efforts on increasing deportation flights and improvement of travel procedures to return people to Central America. In addition, the agency had its first large flights to China in six years and had planes stop in Southeastern Europe and in some African countries, Gonzalez and Spagat note. 

Separately, while the new Trump administration is expected to start actions on mass deportation, as reported by John Hanna of the Los Angeles Times, some Americans express concerns about the impact in their communities. Even in Tennessee, where a majority supports mass deportation of undocumented individuals with a criminal record, a church in rural Morristown reflects nuance and remains committed to supporting immigrants, reports Char Daston of WPLN News. Our recent polling suggests similar nuance. 

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of senators is working on what could be a new border deal for 2025, report Stef W. Kight and Stephen Neukam of Axios. 

The small group is led by Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Oklahoma), who said that two Democratic senators have joined the conversation. This and other initiatives are showing that some Republican and Democrats are willing to have conversations on bipartisan border efforts, Kight and Neukam highlight. 

Welcome to Friday’s edition of The Forum Daily. I’m Clara Villatoro, the Forum’s assistant vice president of strategic communications. The great Forum Daily team also includes Jillian Clark, Soledad Gassó Parker and Dan Gordon. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at cvillatoro@immigrationforum.org. 

GROWTH — In 2024 the U.S. population grew at its fastest rate in over two decades thanks to immigration, according to new information from the U.S. Census Bureau, reports Mike Schneider of the Associated Press. The number of immigrants counted in the U.S. grew by 2.8 million. This increase is due to a new process that counts those admitted into the country for humanitarian reasons. "These numbers show immigration can be an important contributor to population gains in a large swath of the nation that would otherwise be experiencing slow growth or declines," said William Frey a demographer with The Brookings Institution. 

THE WALL — Despite Texas’ official efforts on its border wall project, a third of landowners refused to let any structure be built on their properties, reports a team at The Texas Tribune. The shortage of landowners willing to have the wall on their property has led to fragmentation and moved the construction further away, instead of where wall would be most effective, according to experts. The Tribune analyzes the financial cost and effectiveness of the Texas effort.

MEATPACKING — While the meatpacking industry overwhelmingly supported the Trump presidential campaign, some of the incoming administration’s policies could affect their workforce, reports a team at Axios. Meatpacking relies more on foreign-born workers than almost any other industry. Now, some are concerned about what new immigration enforcement could mean. "If you ask anybody on the packing side of things, going back before COVID … no one's going to tell you there's a bigger challenge in the meat supply chain than labor," said Ethan Lane of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. 

THANKFUL — Back in 2015, Mohammed al-Refaai was a 22-year-old refugee fleeing Syria’s civil war and resettling in the United States. On NPR’s All Thing’s Considered, Matt Ozug, Ari Shapiro, and John Ketchum revisit Mohammed nearly a decade after his story originally aired. Now, reunited with his family and living in Toledo, Ohio, Mohammed is excited for his homeland’s recent political turn and thankful for the welcome he received in the United States years ago.  

This week in welcome news: 

Thanks for reading, 

Clara