Deportations from the United States under President Donald Trump’s administration have broken every previous record. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported 483,200 people in fiscal year 2026, and arrested more than 491,000 immigrants over the same period, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said on Wednesday.
No single fiscal year in ICE’s 23-year history has seen so many people deported. The previous high was 442,640 deportations in 2025, and the Trump administration has now passed that record as well.
The figures were released a few days after Trump acknowledged that his administration’s immigration crackdown may have been “too harsh”.
“In fiscal year 2026, ICE arrested and deported more immigrants than at any time in its history. September 2026 was also the best September in ICE history for arrests,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a statement.
ICE said more than 48,000 immigrants were arrested last September. In August, 50,925 people had been arrested. After two straight months of record arrests, the number eased slightly in September.
Questions over the figures
Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a Washington, DC-based research group, told Al Jazeera there was no doubt the Trump administration had enforced immigration law more strictly than any previous president. There is evidence, he said, that the illegal immigrant population has also fallen considerably as more people leave the United States voluntarily for fear of enforcement.
He added, however, that the figures published by DHS were unclear.
“This data is always incomplete and hard to measure accurately,” Camarota said. “What I still don’t understand about the published numbers is what percentage of those arrested or deported were picked up in operations inside the United States, what percentage were removed from the interior of the country, and what percentage were turned back at the border or at airports.”
He also said that a rise in deportations could encourage people to return to their home countries, and that making people leave the United States is one of the Trump administration’s main goals.
An immigration policy that may be “too harsh”
Trump recently admitted that his administration’s immigration policy may have been “too harsh”.
In an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes”, he said: “Many people will say it’s great. But to many people it may seem too harsh.”
Trump nevertheless claimed his administration’s immigration drive had been a success. “I’ll get very good marks for getting people out of the country. My results on getting the bad people out are very good. But my image is being hurt because we have also deported people who had good jobs. Their only crime was that they entered the country illegally,” he said.
Trump’s popularity on immigration has also fallen. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, support for him on the issue has dropped to 38 percent, from 50 percent when he took office.
After taking control of Congress next year, the Democratic Party may move to stop Trump’s immigration crackdown. Democrats plan to step up oversight of ICE’s tactics and operations and to widen the ways immigrants can stay in the United States legally, though their power to carry out these plans will be limited.
Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, is set to become chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. “We will investigate the administration over the use of the Department of Homeland Security as a political weapon against Americans and over its uncontrolled immigration policy,” he said in a statement to Reuters.
At a news conference at the US Capitol, Henry Cuellar, a moderate Democrat from Texas, spoke alongside members-elect and sitting lawmakers from the southwestern border states. He said he had already held talks with Trump administration officials about deporting people involved in crime.
“We will not take an extreme position,” Cuellar said, pointing to conservative voters in the United States who had voted for Democrats this time.
Some party leaders spoke more harshly. Celebrating her victory in Minnesota, Senator-elect Peggy Flanagan said: “We will tear ICE apart.”
Last January, during a stepped-up immigration operation in Minnesota, two people were shot dead by federal immigration officers. They were Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, both US citizens. Video recorded by passers-by captured the two separate shootings in Minneapolis.
The videos spread widely on social media and caused outrage internationally. Other videos showed masked immigration officers using chemical agents and beating civilians, some of whom were filming the officers and some of whom were protesting. Under the US Constitution, such actions are protected rights.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report