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By Dan Gooding
Associate News Editor
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President Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, said Wednesday that the administration is expecting that 600,000 immigrants will be deported this year.
Speaking at Axios’ Future of Defense Summit, Homan said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was on track to reach that number, following a spike in arrests of alleged illegal immigrants.
Why It Matters
Homan’s claim follows a DHS statement earlier in October that it had so far deported over half a million people, while continuing to not publish public data on removals. Trump promised to carry out mass deportations on his return to the White House, but ICE has struggled at times with detention capacity and having enough resources to carry out deportations.
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What To Know
While ICE has a record number of immigrants in its detention centers across the country, following a rapid increase in targeted enforcement activities, the next part—deporting individuals—remains a point of tension.
Trump’s deputy chief of staff and driving force of immigration policy, Stephen Miller, was reported to be unhappy with the pace of arrests and removals earlier in the summer and was putting pressure on DHS to accelerate them. The external messaging has been that deportations are taking place, and at a rapid pace.
In September, data from ICE obtained through an FOIA request showed a steady rise in people self-deporting, with roughly 145,000 immigrants deported by ICE between January and July. In the months since, ICE has been given a major financial boost through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, allowing the agency to ramp up operations.
However, since January, public data has not been made available on the Department of Homeland Security’s website, as it was for several years, making it harder to track removals.
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Homan said that 548,000 had been removed from the U.S. so far in 2025 under Trump, between ICE and its border counterpart, Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Homan believed that meant 600,000 was possible by the end of the calendar year.
Trump has been vocal in wanting to deport more than any of his predecessors. Under former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, deportations and removals were relatively high. Obama was seen as “deporter in chief," having removed over 5.3 million during his eight years in office.
Over 4.6 million people were removed from the U.S. between January 2021 and November 2024 during Biden's presidency, while Trump oversaw 2.1 million removals during his first term.
"Their current pace, if we just do the quick math, is 515,000 divided by ~273 days (from January 20 to October 19 inclusive) = a pace of 1,886 repatriations per day. Multiplied by 365 days in a year, that would put them on pace to do ~688,553 repatriations total," Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told Newsweek.
"This likely includes more interior arrests and removals than occurred under Biden and is perhaps approaching the Obama administration's interior removals levels, but without the broken-down data, it is hard to know. But 600,000 itself would not be a record."
The border czar was grilled by Axios’ Brittany Gibson about data, after he said on Wednesday that over 70 percent of ICE detainees were convicted criminals or those with pending charges. She said that data shared with Congress showed the opposite—that the majority do not have criminal convictions.
Homan said that data was “behind” and that DHS considers those with immigration violations to be criminals, while others were fugitives or national security threats who all needed to be deported.
Gibson raised the issue of the conduct of ICE agents, which has come under increasing scrutiny in recent months, asking Homan if he had broken car windows when seeking a suspect during his time as an agent. He said “yes," adding that officers were doing the same as they had been for forty years.
Homan also sought to reassure the audience that standards remained high for new recruits, following reports that ICE applicants had failed fitness tests and other vetting processes, and added that some had been “relieved” of their duties.
What People Are Saying
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told Newsweek: “There are multiple reasons to suggest this 600,000 figure is not accurate. Previous claims made by DHS about ‘deportations’ of ‘illegal migrants’ appeared to include many enforcement actions that were neither deportations nor involved anyone present unlawfully. For example, earlier counts of “deportations” appeared to include people turned around at airports by Customs and Border Protection due to issues with their visas.
"Unfortunately, the Trump administration has made it impossible to independently verify these figures. After taking office, DHS stopped publishing both monthly and quarterly data on deportations. As of today, the only way to determine whether this figure is true would be to file a Freedom of Information Act request and wait months or years to get a response.”
Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told Newsweek: "Turning people away at airports and other ports of entry could explain the higher number of repatriations than arrests. Another factor is that the Department of Homeland Security is also removing people who were arrested and issued removal orders in past years.
**"**To really understand what is going on, we would need broken down data that shows arrests, removals, and returns by agency, and ideally, the data would indicate where someone was arrested so we could tell whether it was at the border or in the interior of the US. In other words, the data they used to release monthly from the Office of Homeland Security Statistics."
**Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, in a statement to Newsweek on Thursday: "**This is just the beginning. Trump and Secretary Noem have jumpstarted an agency that was vilified and barred from doings its job for the last four years. In the face of a historic number of injunctions from activist judges, ICE, CBP, and the U.S. Coast Guard have made historic progress to carryout Trump’s promise of arresting and deporting illegal aliens who have invaded our country.
"Additionally, illegal aliens are hearing our message to leave now or face the consequence. Migrants are now even turning back before they reach our borders— migration through Panama’s Darién Gap is down 99.99%."
Tom Homan, speaking to Axios’ Brittany Gibson in Washington, D.C.: “If you're in the United States illegally, you're not off the table. If we find you, we're going to arrest you."
What Happens Next
With increased funding, ICE is growing its staffing and detention space. It is likely that Trump’s supporters will still be looking to see if a rise in deportation numbers will follow.
Update 10/23/25, 3:55 p.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from Aaron Reichlin-Melnick.
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