ICE is on Pace to Deport More Than 400,000 People in Trump's First Year in Office: Report

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is deporting nearly 1,500 people per day, a rate that would surpass 400,000 removals by the end of President Donald Trump's first year in office, according to an analysis published by The New York Times.

That figure would be well above the 271,000 people deported in the previous year but below the administration's stated goal of one million deportations per year. The 1,500 per day rate is a pace not seen since the Obama administration.

The report details that ICE has deported at least 180,000 people so far in the Trump administration, though the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) places the number at 332,000, a figure that includes individuals turned away at U.S. borders by Customs and Border Protection.

The agency has been expanding operations since receiving new funding, including $76 billion allocated under a domestic policy bill signed in July, which will allow for thousands of new agents, additional detention space, and increased chartered and military flights for removals.

Trump administration officials, led by senior adviser Stephen Miller, instructed ICE in May to escalate arrests regardless of criminal history, pushing for 3,000 arrests per day—triple the daily average from early in Trump's first term. Since then, most of the increase in arrests has involved people without prior convictions, as NYT points out.

The immigrant detention system has expanded significantly in the last few months as well. ICE now holds about 60,000 people, with more than 50 new detention centers added since Trump took office, including private facilities, federal prisons, and temporary structures.

DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin told The New York Times that $45 billion of new funds will be used to expand detention capacity by 80,000 beds, while $14 billion will support transportation for removals.

The deportation surge coincides with new government data suggesting the U.S. immigrant population may have dropped by about 2 million people in the first half of the year. The figure, drawn from the Census Bureau's monthly Current Population Survey, would represent the largest decline in decades, according to Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies.

Experts, however, caution the estimate may not be reliable. Jed Kolko of the Peterson Institute for International Economics said the scale of the decline is "way outside the range of immigration estimates that leading researchers have made" while Julia Gelatt of the Migration Policy Institute added that the number may reflect that immigrants may be reluctant to disclose their status in government surveys amid heightened enforcement.