ICE Records Highest Arrests and Deportations in Agency History During Fiscal 2026

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement set new records for both arrests and removals in fiscal year 2026, the Department of Homeland Security announced. ICE recorded more than 491,000 immigration arrests, including nearly 475,000 administrative arrests, and completed 483,200 deportations. The deportation total exceeds the prior agency record of 442,640 set in fiscal 2025 and is nearly equal to the combined deportations of the three full fiscal years under the Biden administration.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin stated that fiscal 2026 saw “the highest number of ICE deportations and arrests for any year in ICE’s history” and that September alone ranked as the best September on record for arrests. He credited President Trump’s leadership, saying ICE has been “unleashed to target and remove illegal aliens so that we can save American lives.” August produced a single-month arrest high of 50,925; September still exceeded 48,000 arrests.

Since President Trump returned to office in January 2025, DHS has reported that more than 3 million migrants have left the United States, with nearly 1.2 million deported and more than 1.25 million arrested as of October. The fiscal 2026 arrest figure surpasses the combined totals of fiscal years 2022, 2023, and 2024 under Biden by tens of thousands. Deportations in 2026 were more than eight times the number recorded in Biden’s first full fiscal year.

The numbers were released days after President Trump acknowledged in a “60 Minutes” interview that aspects of the deportation campaign may have been “too tough” and contributed to Republican midterm losses. Administration officials have maintained that interior enforcement and border security remain priorities. Acting and former ICE leadership have previously described the expansion of detention capacity and personnel as central to the sustained pace.

Administrative arrests—those made for civil immigration violations without a judicial warrant—accounted for the large majority of the 2026 total and themselves set a record. Critics of the scale of enforcement have disputed the emphasis on non-criminal violators; DHS statements have highlighted the removal of individuals with criminal records alongside the broader interior operations. The agency’s 23-year history had previously been measured against the Obama-era peak of roughly 410,000 removals in 2012, a figure that included a larger share of border-handover cases.