Nearly 200,000 people deported from US since Trump return to office

As the number of deportation flights from the United States hits record highs, immigration rights activists are finding it hard to keep up.  

They do what they can to witness the flights and spread the word of where they’re headed and how many people are on board.  

They have to do it in person because airlines use dummy call signs to block the flights from tracking websites. 

The activists work helps people locate loved ones in the absence of information from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.  

One activist has logged just under 6,000 flights from the start of US President Donald Trump's second term through to July - a 41 percent increase over the same period last year. In July alone, there were more than 1,200 flights used to remove people from the US.  

Those figures include 68 military deportation flights since January – with most going to the US detention centre in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. 

According to US officials, nearly 200,000 people were deported in the seven months following Trump’s return to office. Figures from mid-August showed just over 59,000 in ICE detention.  

But as the numbers of people detained increase, so do the protests, with many US cities staging rallies against the immigration sweep.