ICE Says It's Deporting More Immigrants Than Ever. Many Are Actually Leaving Voluntarily.
Immigrants facing poorly vetted agents and a lack of due process are choosing to leave the country on their own terms.
On Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that in FY 2026, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) "broke the record for the highest number of deportations and arrests in any fiscal year," with "more than 491,000 immigration arrests and more than 483,000 deportations."
ICE claimed that its numbers in FY 2026 alone "dwarfed deportation and arrest numbers from the entirety of the Biden Administration." Indeed, internal ICE data—obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a nonpartisan data research organization—show that in FY 2026, ICE recorded the highest number of deportations since FY 2009. That year, under President Barack Obama, ICE deported 489,251 people.
In a statement, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin credited President Donald Trump's "leadership" for unleashing the agency to "target and remove illegal aliens." However, the agency's data show that it has carried out fewer removal operations under the Trump administration than in previous years. ICE can conduct fewer operations while keeping its deportation numbers high because immigrants are increasingly choosing to self-deport or turn back at the border.
In July and August, voluntary departures and voluntary returns—deportation processes that allow illegal immigrants to depart the U.S. of their own volition with no removal order or "related immigration consequences"—made up 37 percent of total deportations, compared with the first three months of the Trump administration, when they accounted for "less than 5 percent." In FY 2026, immigration judges issued 11 times as many orders for voluntary departures as in FY 2024.
ICE's deportation totals—which include methods such as voluntary departures, withdrawals of applications for admission, and voluntary returns that allow reentry into the country—are typically grouped under deportations. The all-inclusive figure might play well to the president's supporters, but it obscures the atmosphere of fear and illiberalism powering the Trump administration's deportation numbers.
ICE set a goal to hire 10,000 new officers and agents within a year. To meet its goal, the agency has lowered hiring standards, sending prospective officers out to enforce Trump's immigration agenda with little training, often before their background checks are even complete. On Tuesday, The Washington Post reported that a review of a "small fraction" of the 12,000 recent hires by DHS found "at least 19 officers who had faced past allegations of misconduct or criminal charges, or had other employment red flags," including at least six cases in which officers were "fired or decertified, or resigned under threat of dismissal."
On Wednesday, The New York Times reported that David Brouillette—the rookie ICE officer who fatally shot a Colombian immigrant in Maine in July—had a "record of deep-seated anti-immigrant hostility, especially against Colombians." Despite the documented claims against Brouillette, he was "fast-tracked through a preliminary vetting process" and "allowed to skip ICE's full training course in Georgia." The Times reported that "at the time of the shooting in Maine," ICE hadn't reviewed Brouillette's background report, so it had no indication whether he had red flags that would make him undesirable as a law enforcement officer.
Being shot or beaten by unaccountable federal officers is one thing. Immigrants must also account for the possibility that they could be deported to a third country or secretly transferred out of state without notice to their loved ones or legal counsel.
In a choice between state-sanctioned violence and a peaceful return on their own terms, it's hardly surprising that immigrants would choose to depart the U.S. voluntarily rather than risk becoming another victim of the Trump administration's policies.
Exit polls from NBC News and CNN show that Trump's immigration enforcement tactics were unpopular with midterm voters. Yet the president seems ready to double down on his policies. After floating the possibility of working out an amnesty deal with the incoming Democratic-led Congress, Trump told reporters Wednesday that there'd be "no amnesty," and that he hadn't "told Stephen Miller," the mastermind behind his immigration agenda and the new White House chief of staff, to "make any changes to the administration's efforts to deport millions."
Outside of partisan bluster, Democrats have shown little evidence they can act as a bulwark against the Trump administration's immigration enforcement agenda. Trump could veto any bill passed by a Democratic-led Congress, and two years of a Republican majority have left ICE fully funded with over $152 billion in taxpayer money unspent between it and Customs and Border Protection.
Still, the incoming Congress could exercise its authority over appropriations and rescind the funds bankrolling ICE's campaign of intimidation.
