Promise Kept: ICE Sets All-Time Records With 483,200 Deportations and 491,000+ Arrests

Written By TNT Staff, Posted on November 13, 2026

President Trump promised the largest deportation effort in American history. The government’s own numbers now show he delivered.

The Department of Homeland Security announced Thursday that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement carried out 483,200 deportations in Fiscal Year 2026, which ended Sept. 30. That is the most in the agency’s history, beating the record of 442,640 set the year before. ICE also made more than 491,000 immigration arrests, also a record. Nearly 475,000 of them were administrative arrests, “by far the highest total in ICE’s history.”

One year vs. three

The comparison with the last administration is hard to argue with. According to DHS, ICE’s FY2026 deportations nearly match all three full fiscal years of the Biden administration combined (FY2022 through FY2024), which totaled 486,000. They are more than eight times the “just over 59,000” deportations in Biden’s first fiscal year, FY2021.

On arrests, the gap is wider. ICE’s FY2026 arrest total beat those three full Biden years combined, which came to less than 427,000, and it is more than six times FY2021’s “just over 74,000.”

The pace held all year. DHS says ICE arrested 43,900 people in June 2026, a monthly record at the time. July broke it with 50,208, and August broke it again with 50,925. September added more than 48,000 arrests and 44,000 removals, which DHS says is more than 300% above the average September under Biden.

“Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, ICE has been unleashed to target and remove illegal aliens so that we can save American lives,” DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said. Since the start of the term, according to DHS, nearly 1.2 million illegal aliens have been deported and more than 1.25 million arrested, and more than 3 million migrants have left the country.

Who is being removed

Critics like to say ICE is going after gardeners and grandmothers. The release names some of the people ICE arrested in FY2026, and it reads like a crime blotter:

• A Mexican national charged with second-degree murder and aggravated sexual battery in the death of a 2-year-old girl in Louisa County, Virginia. Local authorities handed him to ICE.
• A Laotian man convicted of first-degree criminal sexual conduct against a girl, who was granted a pardon in June 2026 by Gov. Tim Walz’s Minnesota Clemency Review Commission. ICE deported him in July.
• A Venezuelan woman charged over her alleged role as the driver in a Tren de Aragua-linked shooting at a Chicago house party that killed three people.
• A Brazilian man DHS describes as a former commander in two gangs designated as foreign terrorist organizations, arrested in North Carolina while, DHS says, holding his own wife hostage.
• An Indian truck driver charged with criminally negligent homicide after a crash in Oregon killed a newlywed couple. Local officials refused ICE’s detainer and released him; ICE arrested him later that month.

Those charged and not convicted are presumed innocent. The pattern is still clear: where local authorities cooperate, dangerous people are handed to ICE at the jailhouse door. Where sanctuary politicians refuse, ICE has to find them again on the street.

What would Democrats undo?

That question now matters. Democrats take control of Congress in January, and their leaders have not been subtle. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on Nov. 9 that “we need to put an end to Donald Trump’s violent mass deportation machine,” and several members have called for abolishing ICE outright, according to a White House compilation of their statements.

So voters should ask specific questions. Which of the people above should have stayed? Which detainers should have been ignored? Should the next record be set by removals or by releases?

The House can hold hearings and fight over budgets. It can’t change who runs ICE. FY2026 shows what happens when the agency is allowed to do its job, and the administration has given every sign it intends to keep doing it.

Sources: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “ICE Breaks Records in Fiscal Year 2026” (Nov. 12, 2026); The White House (Nov. 12, 2026).

TNT Staff