ICE is hitting its deportation stride under new Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, averaging about 1,250 formal deportations a day over the last three months.
That’s down from the peak deportations at the start of this year, when DHS flooded cities with high-profile street-level sweeps. But it’s still much higher than under the Biden administration and, for the most part, has been accomplished with fewer of the harsh headlines that plagued Mr. Mullin’s predecessor, ousted Secretary Kristi Noem.
“I’ve turned down the temperature of the stove to get it correct, without boiling over,” the secretary told reporters last week.
All told, since late January 2025, when President Trump took office, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has tallied nearly 600,000 removals and more than 500,000 book-ins, which are a proxy for arrests.
In recent months, ICE has averaged 1,150 book-ins a day, according to the new data. That’s still less than the January peak, when the agency was conducting high-profile operations in major cities, but it’s significantly higher than ICE managed in February and March, after the city surges ended.
ICE also reported 65,765 migrants in detention as of July 11, up from about 60,000 in April but down from a high of more than 70,000 in late January.
Those January highs came with big downsides, including massive resistance protests in Minneapolis and Chicago, streets suffocating with DHS tear gas, news coverage of parents and kids being snared in arrests, and the deaths of two U.S. citizens shot during confrontations with immigration officers.
Mr. Mullin took office vowing to avoid all that, while still trying to give President Trump his mass deportations. For the most part that’s been true, though the calm was shattered earlier this month by the shooting deaths of two people involved in vehicle stop encounters with ICE. Both incidents are under investigation.
Administration officials say recent weeks have set new records for arrests and deportations.
Mr. Mullin told reporters they were setting “single-day records, every single day.”
The New York Times reported that ICE sees 2,000 daily arrests as the new standard.
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which tracks DHS’s enforcement numbers, said ICE averaged 1,474 arrests a day in the first 11 days of July. TRAC doubted that 2,000 arrests was realistic over the long term.
“While these temporary surges can generate headlines, ICE has not in the past demonstrated the ability to sustain them,” the organization said.
DHS declined an invitation to provide specific numbers to The Washington Times, but hailed the work of the government’s deportation agency.
“ICE is NOT slowing down,” the department said in a statement.
Mr. Mullin said 70% of those ICE is arresting “are felons, or have pending felony charges.” White House border czar Tom Homan, in an interview with the Center for Immigration Studies, put the figure at 60%.
The latest ICE data says that of those in custody as of July 11, 63% had either convictions or pending charges.
That’s up from 56% during the early-year surge.
Mr. Homan said the high arrest numbers come despite major headwinds, including sanctuary cities and federal judges who have ordered migrant released and blocked deportations, questioning the legality of ICE operations and tactics.
He said he’s “happy” with the numbers, but not “satisfied.”
“We need more arrests, and we need more deportations,” he told the center.
He also said he’s still pushing to reach 100,000 detention beds.
The new ICE data is the first update the agency has published since April.
It used to be produced every couple of weeks, but DHS said the partial department shutdown, which ensued after Democrats blocked DHS’s spending bill in a futile attempt to force changes to ICE policy, left the agency unable to finalize the data.
Republicans approved a work-around funding bill for ICE in early June, giving the agency long-term funding through what’s known as the budget reconciliation process.
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