“Despite everything happening inside the country, most deportations are still the result of encounters at the border.”
That was Marc Rosenblum, the former head of the DHS Office of Homeland Security Statistics, and it is the line that best sums up the report his team — now at the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), a nonpartisan Washington think tank — published this Thursday, October 22. It is the most serious count in existence today of deportations under Trump’s second term. Why the most serious? Because the Department of Homeland Security stopped publishing its own numbers in January 2025. With no official data, MPI rebuilt the record request by request, through Freedom of Information Act filings. What it found is worth reading in full.
The headline number: 980,000 in 18 months
Between January 20, 2025 and July 31, 2026, ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) completed about 980,000 deportations. The breakdown, per the report:
580,000 were formal removals (59%), 300,000 enforcement returns (30%) and 110,000 administrative returns (11%).
On an annualized basis, that comes to about 620,000 in the first year of the second term and about 660,000 over the last fiscal year — 26% above the yearly average of the Biden era (2021–2024). More than before, yes. But far from the one million deportations a year the administration promised when Congress approved billions for its immigration agenda. And far below the historical record: 1.86 million in fiscal year 2000, under President Clinton.
The number that matters most in your community
Only 20% of those deportations involved people with a criminal conviction.
And there is an even more uncomfortable figure for the official narrative: among those deported who had lived in the United States for two years or more, 71% had no criminal conviction. Read the fine print: the report describes people who had likely spent years in American communities — working, paying rent, taking their kids to school — and ended up in a deportation statistic without ever being convicted of a crime.
Where it’s happening: the border drives the count, but the interior is accelerating
Sixty-nine percent of deportations started with a border encounter: about 680,000 people detained there or returned after being processed. The border remains the engine of the count.
But — and this “but” is what changes the picture for Latino families — arrests inside the country are growing fast. They rose from 28% of the total in 2025 to 39% in July 2026, and their monthly pace more than doubled: from about 8,000 a month in the first three months of the term to about 19,000 a month between May and July 2026. Raids in communities are no longer the exception; they are an ever-larger part of the machinery.
What about the White House’s “1.2 million”?
Two days earlier, the White House published its own tally: “nearly 1.2 million people deported or removed” in less than two years (we covered it in detail yesterday). The MPI report does not directly refute it, but it adds the asterisk: the government’s figure covers an undefined period, mixes different categories and includes voluntary departures — about 170,000 since January 2025, per data cited in the analysis — while the independent count covers an exact, verifiable period.
The moral is not new, but it bears repeating: when nobody publishes the official data, everyone counts their own way.
Why they are not reaching one million
The report explains the shortfalls. In the past, most unauthorized migrants were Mexican nationals who rarely sought asylum: deporting them was relatively quick. Today they come from a dozen different countries, many claim asylum — and that stretches everything out. Add the immigration courts: although pending cases fell from 4.18 to 3.09 million, the backlog remains monumental and every case needs a judge.
The report lands 12 days before the November 3 elections. It is no coincidence these numbers are coming out now: immigration is the issue where Trump has bet the most political capital, and also where the polls show the most erosion among Hispanics.
What to do today, in order
1. If you have a final order of removal or a pending hearing, talk to an immigration lawyer now. With interior arrests doubling, passive waiting is the worst plan.
2. Do not sign a voluntary departure without legal advice. It can become a years-long bar on returning.
3. Keep your documents in order. USCIS receipts, court letters, proof of everything: in this climate, your file is your defense.
More context: the State Department also revoked more than 300,000 visas in this same period. And follow our News section for updated immigration coverage.
Official sources
- Migration Policy Institute, report published October 22, 2026 (author: Marc Rosenblum, former head of the DHS Office of Homeland Security Statistics), as reported by Reuters: Trump administration oversaw 980,000 deportations during first 18 months.
- Associated Press, “Deportations climb under Trump but fall short of White House target, a new report finds” (October 22, 2026).
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