U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported 483,200 people in fiscal year 2026, which ended on September 30. This is the highest annual number of deportations in the agency’s 23-year history, the Department of Homeland Security said.
ICE also reported more than 491,000 immigration arrests. Nearly 475,000 of them were administrative arrests for alleged civil violations of immigration rules, rather than detentions on criminal charges.
Arrests Accelerated During the Summer
In August, the agency carried out 50,925 arrests, setting a monthly record. The previous record was recorded in July, with 50,208 arrests. In September, ICE reported more than 48,000 arrests and around 44,000 deportations.
The number of deportations in fiscal year 2026 was 9% higher than the previous record of 442,640 deportations, recorded in fiscal year 2025. Compared with fiscal year 2024, the last full year of Joe Biden’s term, the increase was around 78%–from 271,480 to 483,200 deportations.
„Fiscal year 2026 brought the highest number of deportations and arrests for any year in ICE’s history,“ Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said.Details of the Statistics Remain Limited
The published data do not provide a full breakdown of how many of those deported had criminal convictions or what the status of the others was. ICE and the Department of Homeland Security also do not present a single nationwide statistic covering all deportations carried out by federal immigration agencies.
Different institutions count forced deportations, voluntary departures and returns in different ways. An analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University shows that in July and August 2026, formal deportations accounted for 63% of all ICE deportations reported for the period.
„It is accurate to say that ICE is carrying out a record number of arrests,“ said Marc Rosenblum of the Migration Policy Institute, a former senior official responsible for statistics at the Department of Homeland Security. He added, however, that the limited data published do not provide a detailed picture.
Donald Trump’s administration halted the regular publication of detailed monthly data on immigration arrests, detentions and deportations after the beginning of his second term. As a result, comparisons with previous years are made using different reporting methods.
ICE’s new record also exceeds the figure of 405,090 deportations in 2014, when Barack Obama was president. Broader national statistics for some periods in the early 2000s, however, include actions by other agencies and are not directly comparable with the data published by ICE.
Sources: apnews.com, cbsnews.com