Donald Trump’s administration set a target of 1 million deportations a year, with at least 3,000 immigration arrests a day.
But according to figures released by the Department of Homeland Security to members of Congress to justify its mammoth budget, the administration didn’t come close to that scale of removals within the first nine months of Trump’s return to the White House despite the president’s government-wide anti-immigration agenda.
Budget requests to Congress reveal Immigration and Customs Enforcement is now preparing to hit those goals.
ICE deported 442,637 people within the 2025 fiscal year, which began in the final months of Joe Biden’s administration and ended September 30, before federal agents surged into cities and made thousands of arrests in street-level dragnets.
The Office of Homeland Security Statistics has not updated its data since last November, but deportation data shared with Congress offers a first glimpse at ICE’s impact within the bulk of Trump’s first year back in office — and plans for the fiscal years in the remainder of his term.
ICE told Congress that the agency plans to deport 1 million people — and hold at least 99,000 people on any given day in ICE detention centers — in the 2026 and 2027 fiscal years.
In a statement recognizing Trump’s first year back in office, Homeland Security claimed 2.2 million “self-deportations” and “more than 675,000 deportations” since January 20, 2025.
That figure, if accurate, would still be far below the 778,000 removals in the final full fiscal year of the Biden administration — and tens of thousands short of a goal to remove 1 million people per year.
Last year, Congress approved roughly $191 billion for DHS through Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, including $75 billion for ICE and another $65 billion for Customs and Border Protection, the government’s primary immigration enforcement arms.
That massive injection of taxpayer cash — seven times larger than ICE’s annual budget — has made it one of the most well-funded policing agencies in the world, rivaling some nations’ entire military spending.
ICE told Congress that it supports slashing roughly $751 million from its detention and removal transportation budgets, thanks to last year’s separate funding measure.
But that leaves billions of dollars in the tank for the agency to continue hiring thousands of removal officers, retrofit massive warehouses to detain thousands of people, and partner with hundreds of local law enforcement agencies to increase ICE’s footprint in communities across the country.
More than 68,000 people are currently in ICE detention, as of April 4, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which analyzes data from federal agencies.
Expanding detention space to be able to hold 99,000 people on any given day “are critical” to meeting ICE’s goal of arresting and removing 1 million people a year, Homeland Security told lawmakers.
That increase will prevent “bottlenecks in the removal lifecycle,” the agency wrote.
“Further increases in allocations for ICE detention bedspace will drive average daily population figures higher, though this increase may be gradual as the acquisition and construction of new facilities, and expansion and retrofitting of existing facilities takes time,” according to the agency.
ICE’s drastic expansion within the last year has fueled allegations of abuse in detention centers and illegal use of force on the streets as Trump surged officers into Democratic-led cities.
The administration’s radical upheaval of the immigration system has transformed immigration courthouses and administrative offices into fast tracks to detention and removal in stark violation of due process rights, according to civil rights groups and immigration lawyers.
Dozens of immigration court judges who were fired or forced out of their jobs say the administration launched a pressure campaign against them with threats of disciplinary action if they didn’t keep up with demands to deport tens of thousands of people from the country.
Trump demoted Kristi Noem to a “special envoy” role in his administration, but Homeland Security’s goals — and the people putting them in motion — are unchanged.
Newly appointed DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said he wants to keep the agency out of the headlines but the mission remains the same. And Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy and a key architect of the president’s anti-immigration agenda, hasn’t left the White House.
Iran war live: Iran threatens to close Red Sea if Trump does not lift blockade
Congress is facing its own #MeToo moment. It’s probably not enough
Trump promises to ‘permanently reopen’ Strait of Hormuz
Reeves: Trump’s Iran war is a mistake and has not made the world safer
Chevron executive tells Americans facing high gas prices to ‘drive less’
Trump says the ‘world would be torn to pieces’ if he wasn’t president
