Quito: The United States has deported 1,297 undocumented migrants to Ecuador since the start of 2025, Ecuadoran Foreign Minister Gabriela Sommerfeld said Thursday. “We see that to date the trend is in keeping with comparable statistics from 2024,” Sommerfeld told a hearing of the National Assembly’s International Relations Committee.
According to Namibia Press Agency, Sommerfeld presented the committee with the measures being taken to help the deported migrants in the context of a crackdown on illegal immigration by the U.S. administration. She noted that deportation flights from the United States have arrived in Ecuador regularly since 2005, with a total of 15,450 Ecuadorans returned between 2005 and 2018.
Sommerfeld provided further statistics, stating that 1,490 deportees were received in 2019, with the number increasing to 3,358 in 2020 and 6,384 in 2021. Since 2022, there have been two weekly deportation flights, each carrying an average of 120 migrants. In 2022, the number of deportees reached 3,770, surged to 18,449 in 2023, and then dropped to 3,589 in 2024.