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.

She presented the committee with the measures being taken to help the deported migrants in the context of a crackdown on illegal immigration by the US administration.

Sommerfeld said deportation flights from the United States have arrived in Ecuador on a regular basis since 2005, with 15,450 Ecuadorans returned to the country between 2005 and 2018.

According to Sommerfeld, 1,490 deportees were received in 2019, a figure that increased to 3,358 in 2020 and 6,384 in 2021. Since 2022, there have been two weekly deportation flights, each with an average of 120 migrants on board.

In 2022, deportees numbered 3,770. But in 2023 the number soared to 18,449, dropping again in 2024 to 3,589, she said.