1. Home
  2. George Fishman
  3. President Trump’s Mid-Term Mass Deportation Report Card: Interior Removals Reach All-Time High

President Trump’s Mid-Term Mass Deportation Report Card: Interior Removals Reach All-Time High

By George Fishman on November 3, 2026

The Botton Line

From January 20, 2021, through January 19, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under President Biden removed aliens from the interior of the United States at an annual rate of 37,727. From January 20, 2025, through August 5, 2026, DHS under President Trump removed aliens from the interior at an annual rate of 180,544 — a 479 percent increase. In FY 2026 (through August 5), the Trump DHS removed aliens from the interior at an annualized rate of 209,212. If that rate proves to have continued through the entire fiscal year, interior removals in 2026 will have set a new all-time high, 9 percent higher than the previous high, fiscal year 2011’s 190,621.

Interior Removals

My colleague Andrew Arthur has recently written that “Some immigration hawks (and even a few on the left and in the media) have criticized President Trump for not fulfilling his ‘mass deportation’ promises.” While campaigning for the 2024 presidential election, President Trump promised that “We will begin the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.” And Maria Sacchetti and Jacob Bogage reported in the Washington Post on April 12, 2025, that “As the Trump administration aggressively pushes to deport more immigrants during the president’s first year back in office, one aspirational number keeps coming up in private conversations, according to four current and former federal officials with direct knowledge of the plans: 1 million.”

Arthur has written that “[T]here are two key metrics to use in determining how stringent any president’s immigration enforcement efforts have been: ICE arrests of aliens in the United States (‘interior arrests’), and ICE removals of aliens from within the United States (as opposed to at the border), also known as ‘interior removals’.” Arthur explained that “by and large, immigration enforcement at the border is reactive, driven by the efforts of foreign nationals to enter the United States illegally” and thus “removals of [such] aliens … are a poor metric to gauge immigration enforcement”. On the other hand, “Immigration enforcement in the interior … is proactive — it represents the efforts of ICE under whatever administration is in control to arrest and remove aliens.”

The prior high-water mark for interior removals in a year was 190,621, which DHS accomplished in 2011 (yes, during the administration of President Barack “Deporter-in-Chief” Obama). I have long been dubious that any administration could top this number by any appreciable amount, given factors such as the enormous backlog in the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) immigration courts, the limited number of detention beds available to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the limited number of ICE officers. Then there is the constitutional impediment that “aliens who have established connections in the country have due process rights in deportation proceedings” regardless of their immigration status, as the Supreme Court reiterated in its 2020 decision in DHS v. Thuraissigiam. And then there are the excessive statutory due process requirements that Congress has piled on, especially in our insane asylum system.

I explained on March 26, 2025, that:

This leads me to conclude that “Given these impediments, the practical ability of DHS to carry out truly large-scale removals on its own may be doubted — through no fault of its own.” I used even stronger language on a June 26, 2025, podcast, stating that “[I]t’s almost impossible to conceive of how mass deportations can effectively occur with only ICE’s 6,000 officers nationwide.” (Beginning at 14:00.) I have thus recommended that “The U.S. military could provide a key assist in DHS’s monumental task” and “can help track down removable aliens. They can help detain them. And they can help remove them.”

The Data

Well, given all that, what has the second Trump administration been able to accomplish regarding interior removals?

First, I should note that any “aspirations” by the Trump administration to reach one million removals a year undoubtedly included both border and interior removals. Given that President Trump has essentially closed down the border and border apprehensions have dropped precipitously, it makes no sense to harken back to the one million goal as it came at a time of an out-of-control border with a massive number of border apprehensions.

While we have official ICE interior removal totals for FYs 2008-2020 readily available, the agency has not released any data publicly since then. Thankfully, the Deportation Data Project (DDP) at the University of California, Berkeley, and UCLA, “collects and posts public, anonymized U.S. government immigration enforcement datasets…. us[ing] the Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] to gather datasets directly from the government, and … also post[s] datasets that the government has posted proactively or in response to others’ requests”. DDP explains that the removal data it makes available “comes from ICE itself in response to FOIA requests” and that “in most cases, we provide the raw data ICE provided without modification”. Importantly, “[DDP] seek[s] and post[s] data … at the individual level. That means the datasets contain a row for each individual immigration enforcement action (such as arrest or removal). This allows the user to conduct more detailed analysis — for example, to count the number of arrests that occurred in a given area of responsibility.”

I present below figures that I have derived from the datasets that DDP has made available (which do not include FYs 2014-18 as the data sets for those years do not allow me to conduct the necessary data filtering). I also present the official ICE totals (where available). Additionally, I present data recently published by the Migration Policy Institute — prepared by its Visiting Senior Fellow, Marc Rosenblum. Rosenblum worked for DHS from 2016 until earlier this year, last serving as the executive director of the Office of Homeland Security Statistics (OHSS).

I discuss methodological issues following a discussion of the numbers.

DHS’s first era of relatively mass interior deportations took place during the five-year period from FY 2008 to FY 2012. My evaluation of the DDP datasets leads me to conclude that over that period, DHS removed 1,109,369 aliens from the interior, an average of 221,874 a year. ICE’s official total for 2008 through 2012 is 1,106,671, an average of 221,334 a year. MPI’s estimate is 1,106,680, an average of 221,336 a year.

The motivation for the Bush and Obama administrations in achieving this level of interior removals was undoubtedly to try to convince dubious members of Congress that the administrations were serious about immigration enforcement, in the hope that this would lead them to support Presidents Bush’s and President Obama’s mass amnesty agendas. When prospects for such an amnesty faded, so did interior removal numbers. By FY 2016, they had fallen to about 65,000.

In any event, all three totals overstate the number of ICE’s interior removals. This is because ICE has always counted all voluntary returns as interior removals, a convention that MPI adheres to, as did I for my above estimate. ICE explained in its “Fiscal Year 2020 Enforcement and Removal Operations Report” that “ICE removals include removals and returns where aliens were turned over to ICE for removal efforts…. [i]nclud[ing] aliens who have received a final order of removal, as well as those who have been processed for Expedited Removal (ER) or Voluntary Return (VR) that are turned over to ICE for detention.” (Emphasis added.) And Rosenblum explained that under OHRR’s methodology, “In general, any migrant removed or returned by DHS who interacts with ICE (i.e., is arrested, reprocessed, transported, detained, or moved out of the United States by ICE) at any point between being apprehended or arrested and being removed or returned is counted as an ICE removal/return.”

But many voluntary returns do not deserve to be categorized as interior removals — as they involve aliens apprehended at or close to the border. Hillel Smith, legislative attorney at the Congressional Research Service has explained that voluntary return is generally utilized for arriving aliens and for aliens who were apprehended within 100 miles of the border within 14 days of entry who had not been admitted or paroled.

Thus, I also estimated interior removals without including voluntary returns. However, my estimate does not disregard those voluntary returns regarding aliens apprehended in the interior, because I removed voluntary returns from the subset of interior removals, not from the overall removal total. In any event, I concluded that over the five-year period from FY 2008 to FY 2012, DHS removed 906,324 aliens from the interior, an average of 181,265 a year. There are no corresponding ICE or MPI totals for this period — or for any period — as they do not report totals that do not include voluntary returns.

During that part of FY 2025 when President Biden was in power (October 1, 2024, through January 19, 2025), DHS removed aliens from the interior at an annualized rate of 59,031 (56,585). During that part of FY 2025 when President Trump was in power (January 20, 2025, through September 30, 2025), DHS removed aliens from the interior at an annualized rate of 155,818 (145,668). In FY 2026 through August 5, 2026, DHS removed aliens at an annualized rate of 229,649 (209,212). The 2026 annualized total including voluntary returns is 6 percent below FY 2008’s all-time high of 243,372, while FY 2026’s annualized total not including voluntary returns is at an all-time high of 209,212, 9 percent higher than the previous high, FY 2011’s 190,621.

In sum, DHS removed 158,906 (150,909 excluding voluntary returns) aliens from the interior during the Biden presidency, which corresponds to an annual average of 39,727 (37,727). During President Trump’s second term (through August 5, 2026), DHS removed 302,762 (278,483) aliens, corresponding to an annual rate of 196,284 (180,544). The removal rate during the Trump presidency was 494 percent (479 percent) higher than it was during the Biden presidency.

Yearly Estimates of Interior Removals

(Numbers in parentheses exclude voluntary returns.)

  • FY 2008: 243,372 (185,951) (CIS); 234,770 (reported by ICE); 234,770 (MPI)
  • FY 2009: 234,919 (185,954) (CIS); 237,941 (reported by ICE); 237,940 (MPI)
  • FY 2010: 227,805 (183,205) (CIS); 229,235 (reported by ICE); 229,240 (MPI)
  • FY 2011: 222,766 (190,621) (CIS); 223,755 (reported by ICE); 223,760 (MPI)
  • FY 2012: 180,507 (160,593) (CIS); 180,970 (reported by ICE); 180,970 (MPI)
  • FY 2013: 133,495 (120,258) (CIS); 133,551 (reported by ICE); 133,550 (MPI)
  • FY 2014: 102,224 (reported by ICE); 100,970 (MPI)
  • FY 2015: 69,478 (reported by ICE); 68,860 (MPI)
  • FY 2016: 65,332 (reported by ICE); 64,960 (MPI)
  • FY 2017: 81,603 (reported by ICE); 81,090 (MPI)
  • FY 2018: 95,360 (reported by ICE); 95,360 (MPI)
  • FY 2019: 84,787 (82,221) (CIS); 85,958 (reported by ICE); 85,960 (MPI)
  • FY 2020: 61,319 (59,268) (CIS); 62,739 (reported by ICE); 62,740 (MPI)
  • FY 2021: 30,212 (29,198) (CIS); 31,560 (MPI)
    • 10/1/20 through 1/19/21: 14,847 (14,147) = annualized rate of 48,821 (46,519) (CIS)
    • 1/20/21 through 9/30/21: 15,365 (15,051) = annualized rate of 22,080 (21,628) (CIS)
  • FY 2022: 28,136 (26,362) (CIS); 28,200 (MPI)
  • FY 2023: 44,991 (41,679) (CIS); 44,260 (MPI)
  • FY 2024: 52,462 (50,609) (CIS); 47,730 (MPI)
  • FY 2025: 126,384 (118,577) (CIS)
    • 10/1/24 through 1/19/25: 17,952 (17,208) = annualized rate of 59,031 (56,585) (CIS)
    • 1/20/25 through 9/30/25: 108,432 (101,369) = annualized rate of 155,818 (145,668) (CIS); = annualized rate of 160,000 (MPI)
  • FY 2026: (through August 5): 194,514 (177,114) = annualized rate of 229,766 (209,212) (CIS; through July 31); = annualized rate of 230,000 (MPI)

Methodology

CIS

For FYs 2007 through 2013, I arrive at the number of interior removals by filtering out U.S. Border Patrol and U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Field Operations (OFO) (during inspections) from the “Removal Program” field.

For FYs 2019 through 2022, I arrive at the number of interior removals by filtering out U.S. Border Patrol and OFO from the “Event Final Program” field.

For FYs 2023 through 2026, I arrive at the number of interior removals by filtering out the U.S. Border Patrol and OFO from the “Final Program Code” field. DDP explains as to the “final program code” that:

The code for the program associated with the arrest (not necessarily performed by ICE), which might also be described as the category of arrest. The values show the range of these categories, but key examples are the criminal alien program, which involves arrests in prisons and jails, the 287(g) program, which involves collaboration with a local agency, and border patrol.

For all fiscal years, I excluded voluntary returns (and withdrawals of applications for admission (§ 235(a)(4) of the Immigration and Nationality Act)) through the “Case Status” field.

MPI

Rosenblum states that his data for FYs 2008 through 2023 comes from OHSS’s “2023 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics”. This appears to be an error, because the data tables that currently comprise the 2023 Yearbook contain no such data. Rosenblum states that his data for FY 2024 comes from OHSS’s “Immigration Enforcement and Legal Processes Monthly Tables”. The Monthly Tables also provide data going back to 2014 that match up with the data provided by Rosenblum for FYs 2014-2023, so I presume he got all his data through FY 2023 from the Monthly Tables. Rosenblum states that his data for FYs 2025 and 2026 is comprised of “estimates … from MPI analysis of FOIA data released by CBP and ICE [and] obtained by the Deportation Data Project”.

Rosenblum explained that:

Some data made available through FOIA are of a slightly different vintage than the final monthly and yearly snapshots used by OHSS for official reporting. In general, ICE and CBP finalize data extracts for OHSS reporting at the end of each month and the end of each fiscal year. These updates typically result in increases of up to one percentage point over the course of a fiscal year between the total suggested by monthly data and the final, adjusted, annual total. This means that the FOIA-based data [I] used … will not be exact matches for official DHS data when they are released.