The United States deported and arrested more people in fiscal year 2026 than in any year in the 23-year history of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement dated 12 November.
ICE reported 483,200 deportations and more than 491,000 immigration arrests in the fiscal year that ended on 30 September, beating the agency’s previous deportation record of 442,640, set in fiscal 2025.
Inside the numbers
DHS said the year’s arrest total included nearly 475,000 administrative arrests – a record the agency called the highest in its history. CBS News, which reported the figures, describes administrative arrests as arrests for civil immigration violations rather than criminal charges. The Associated Press and the Washington Examiner reported the administrative figure as 474,850.
The department framed the totals as a break with the previous administration. It said the fiscal 2026 deportation count was almost equal to the combined total of the three full fiscal years under President Joe Biden (2022, 2023 and 2024), which it put at 486,000, and more than eight times the just over 59,000 deportations recorded in fiscal 2021. Monthly arrests peaked at 50,925 in August, which DHS called a single-month record, before easing to more than 48,000 in September.
“Fiscal Year 2026 saw the highest number of ICE deportations and arrests for any year in ICE’s history,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in the statement. “September 2026 was the best September in ICE’s history in terms of arrests.”
Two readings of “record”
Agency history and government-wide history are different measures. CBS News noted that ICE’s deportation figures exclude government-wide statistics, which include actions by Customs and Border Protection, and do not distinguish formal removals from voluntary returns and departures; on broader measures, nationwide deportations reached higher levels during portions of the early 2000s. A separate analysis by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), reported by CBS News, found that formal removals accounted for just 63 per cent of deportations in July and August 2026, the remainder consisting of voluntary departures and returns.
Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that favours lower immigration, told Al Jazeera the data is incomplete and cannot separate interior enforcement from people turned back at the border or at airports.
“The big issue that I have not been able to determine is what percentage of these individuals are interior enforcement … and what percentage are those turned around at the border,” he said.
Political fallout
The release lands in a difficult political moment. President Donald Trump told CBS’s 60 Minutes that his immigration crackdown “might be too tough”, and Reuters/Ipsos polling puts his approval on immigration at 38 per cent, down from 50 per cent at the start of his presidency.
Democrats, who won control of Congress in last week’s midterm elections and take over next year, have said they will scrutinise ICE’s tactics. Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat set to chair the House Homeland Security Committee, told Reuters: “We will investigate the administration weaponising DHS against Americans (and) its out of control immigration policies.”
Not all Democrats struck the same note. Henry Cuellar, a centrist Texas Democrat, told reporters the focus should stay on criminals: “We’re not going to be extreme.” Senator-elect Peggy Flanagan of Minnesota was blunter: “We will rip ICE apart.”
Al Jazeera recalled that two US citizens, Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, were shot dead by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis in January, deaths that prompted international outcry.
What to watch
Democratic control of Congress from January opens the way to oversight hearings and to questions over ICE funding, though the party’s room to change enforcement by legislation is limited. The next set of enforcement figures – and any court challenges to arrest and detention practices – will test whether the record pace holds.
Sources: DHS/ICE release (ice.gov, 12 November 2026); Al Jazeera (13 November 2026); Associated Press/Los Angeles Times; Washington Examiner; Washington Times; CBS News; Newsweek.
Image: usicegov (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. File photo: an ICE removal flight to Guatemala City in February 2023.