ICE Deports Record 483,200 People in a Year, Nearly 78% Above 2024

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Thursday it deported 483,200 people in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the most in the agency's 23-year history, ABC News reported. CBS News, which obtained the Department of Homeland Security figures, said the total reflects a sharp escalation of President Donald Trump's immigration enforcement.

The agency also reported record arrests. At the same time, researchers say the headline totals leave out details on who is being removed and how, and DHS did not provide a breakdown of criminal histories this time.

The central numbers

• 483,200 deportations in fiscal 2026. That is up 9% from the previous high of 442,640 a year earlier, according to ABC News. CBS News said it is the highest annual figure in ICE's reported history.
• Nearly 78% above 2024. ICE counted 271,480 deportations in 2024, the last year of Joe Biden's presidency, ABC reported.
• 474,850 arrests in the 12-month period. ABC said that is roughly double the 239,890 arrests a year earlier and more than quadruple the 113,430 in 2024. CBS reported nearly 475,000 administrative arrests, which are civil immigration arrests, and more than 491,000 immigration arrests overall.
• 50,925 arrests in August. That was a monthly record, ending a two-month run of highs, according to ABC. ICE still made more than 48,000 arrests in September.
• 63% were formal removals. A Syracuse University research group, TRAC, found that formal removals made up just 63% of deportations in July and August 2026, with voluntary departures and returns making up the rest, CBS reported.

What is behind the numbers

CBS News said the new total is about 18% above the 409,849 removals ICE recorded in fiscal 2012 under President Barack Obama, a long-used agency benchmark. It cautioned, however, that ICE's count does not include governmentwide statistics, which cover U.S. Customs and Border Protection and separate formal removals from voluntary returns. By broader measures, CBS said, nationwide deportations reached higher levels during parts of the early 2000s.

ABC noted that ICE had not released such precise counts since Trump returned to the White House, including for 2025. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin praised ICE officers in a statement and credited Trump's leadership for the results. The administration has described its campaign as a public safety effort aimed at what DHS calls “the worst of the worst,” CBS said, and DHS highlighted individual cases of people charged or convicted of serious crimes.

Who is being arrested

CBS reported that those cases are not representative of the hundreds of thousands of arrests, and that federal authorities have not publicly shown how many arrested immigrants without U.S. criminal records have committed crimes abroad. An analysis cited by CBS found that in July 2026, for the first time in Trump's second term, more than half of ICE arrests involved people with neither a criminal conviction nor a pending charge. The same analysis found that about 6% of people booked into ICE detention in the second term had convictions for violent crimes.

The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute found that only about 20% of roughly 980,000 deportations by ICE and CBP combined between January 2025 and July 2026 involved someone with a criminal conviction. Among deported people who had lived in the U.S. for at least two years, 71% had no criminal conviction, CBS reported.

Why it matters: enforcement reaching communities far from the border

CBS described the figures as a defining feature of Trump's second term: a wide enforcement campaign that has expanded the federal law enforcement presence in communities far from the border. The numbers arrive at a politically complicated moment, CBS said, following the midterm elections. CBS News polls have shown public support for border security alongside concern about how immigration laws are enforced in local communities.

For immigrants and their families, the pace described in the data, with more than 48,000 arrests a month even in September, indicates enforcement that remains sustained rather than a one-month spike.

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Around Prague, based on reporting by CBS News, ABC News, The Guardian

Cover photo: G. Edward Johnson / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0, cropped