U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is hitting its deportation stride under Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, executing an average of about 1,250 formal removals a day over the past three months, according to agency data.
That is down from the peak in removals at the start of this year, when the Department of Homeland Security flooded cities with high-profile street-level sweeps. Still, it is much higher than under the Biden administration and, for the most part, has been accomplished with fewer headlines than those that plagued Mr. Mullin’s predecessor, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whom Mr. Trump fired.
“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 President Trump took office in January 2025, ICE has tallied nearly 600,000 removals and more than 500,000 book-ins, which are proxies for arrests.
In recent months, ICE has averaged 1,150 book-ins a day, according to the new data. That is still less than the January peak, when the agency was conducting high-profile operations in major cities, but it is significantly higher than ICE managed in February and March, after the city surges ended.
ICE 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 choked with federal government tear gas, news coverage of parents and children being snared in arrests, and the shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens during confrontations with federal immigration agents in Minneapolis.
Mr. Mullin took office vowing to avoid all that while still trying to deliver on President Trump’s mass deportations. For the most part, that has been true, though the calm was shattered earlier this month by the shooting deaths of two immigrants during confrontations involving ICE agents in Texas and Maine. Both incidents remain 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 considers 2,000 daily arrests the new standard.
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which tracks Department of Homeland Security enforcement numbers, said ICE averaged 1,474 arrests a day in the first 11 days of July. TRAC doubted that 2,000 arrests were 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.
The department 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 show that, as of July 11, 63% of those in custody had either convictions or pending charges, according to ICE’s own statistics.
That was up from 56% during the early-year surge.
Mr. Homan said the arrest numbers are high despite major headwinds, including sanctuary cities and federal judges who have ordered migrants released and blocked deportations, questioning the legality of ICE operations and tactics.
He said he is “happy” with the numbers, but not “satisfied.”
“We need more arrests, and we need more deportations,” he told the center.
He also said he is 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 the department said the partial shutdown that followed Democrats’ blocking of the department’s spending bill in an attempt to force changes to ICE policy left the agency unable to finalize the data.
Congressional Republicans approved a reconciliation funding bill for ICE in early June, providing the agency with long-term funding.
