US Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported a record 483,200 people in the fiscal year that ended on 30 September, the Department of Homeland Security said on Thursday, the highest annual total in the agency’s 23-year history.
The figure, first obtained by CBS News, is up 9 per cent on the previous record of 442,640 deportations in fiscal 2025 and 78 per cent above the 271,484 recorded in fiscal 2024, the last full year of Joe Biden’s presidency. ICE also arrested 474,850 people over the same period, roughly double the 239,890 arrests a year earlier and more than four times the 113,430 recorded in 2024.
The department said September alone brought more than 48,000 arrests and 44,000 removals. It added that the fiscal 2026 deportation total was almost equal to the combined total for all three full fiscal years under the Biden administration, at 486,000.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the figures showed the agency had been “unleashed” under President Donald Trump, crediting the president’s leadership for the record totals. The release marks the first precise annual counts the agency has published since Mr Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, and it also fills in the previously unreported fiscal 2025 totals.
The record total comes with an important qualification. The department’s figures do not break down how many of those arrested had criminal histories, a breakdown previous administrations routinely published. An analysis published on Wednesday by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), based on enforcement case records obtained through freedom of information litigation, found that formal removals had actually fallen during the second Trump administration, while voluntary departures ordered by immigration judges had grown more than tenfold. The headline total therefore reflects a different mix of enforcement actions than in earlier years, not simply more removals.
The figures land at a sensitive moment for the White House. Immigration enforcement has been the centrepiece of Mr Trump’s second term, but the policy has become a political liability: just last week, days after Democrats swept both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections, Mr Trump conceded his deportation policy had been “too tough” and offered Democrats a deal on immigration. Democrats are expected to use their new House majority to investigate the enforcement drive, including the methods used in interior arrests far from the border.
Whether the record pace can be sustained is an open question. The administration has already deported nearly 1.2 million people and arrested more than 1.25 million since January 2025, according to the department, but the TRAC findings suggest the formal removal machinery is moving more slowly than the headline numbers imply.
Sources: Associated Press, “ICE reports record-high immigration arrests and deportations since Trump’s return to White House” (12 November 2026); US Department of Homeland Security, “ICE Breaks Records in Fiscal Year 2026, With Most Arrests and Deportations in Agency’s History” (https://www.dhs.gov/news/2026/11/12/ice-breaks-records-fiscal-year-2026-most-arrests-and-deportations-agencys-history); Syracuse University TRAC, “Immigration Removals Fall During the Second Trump Administration” (11 November 2026). Note: the deportation and arrest totals are the department’s own figures and have not been independently verified; the TRAC analysis, based on case-level records, questions how the totals are composed.
