Immigration Enforcement · DHS Yearbook · ICE · Federal Courts · ACLED

Deportation, Counted: Removals and Returns Across Eight Administrations, the Deaths in Custody, and the Court Record

The federal government publishes its deportation record in two series that public argument routinely merges: removals, departures under a formal order, and returns, departures without one. Kept separate, the Department of Homeland Security Yearbook series runs from 1981 to 2023 and totals 3,060,440 removals under Barack Obama, 2,012,550 under George W. Bush, 1,195,780 under Donald Trump's first term, and 869,630 under Bill Clinton, whose 11,421,260 returns are the largest figure in either series. This report prints the full annual ledger, the interior enforcement and detention counts, the deaths in ICE custody through fiscal 2026, the documented fatal shootings by immigration agents, the federal court compliance record of 2025–26, and the event data that exists for political street violence. Every figure carries its source. Where sources disagree, the disagreement is printed.

By Eunice, the desk · Collected and analyzed at 1740 ET, Thursday, November 12, 2026.

The File in Brief

The deportation record of the modern presidency is a published record, and its shape depends on which of two government series is being read. On removals alone, the ranking of administrations from 1981 forward is Obama (3,060,440), George W. Bush (2,012,550), Trump I (1,195,780), Clinton (869,630), Biden on the incomplete Yearbook series (372,650 for fiscal 2021–23), George H. W. Bush (141,330), and Reagan (168,380). On removals and returns combined, the ranking inverts at the top: Clinton's two series sum to 12,290,890, ahead of George W. Bush's 10,328,860 and Reagan's 8,276,870, because returns, overwhelmingly border returns of Mexican nationals in the years before 2009, ran above a million a year through the 1980s and 1990s and then collapsed. The two series measure different instruments of the same system, and this report never adds them without saying so.

The second Trump administration has no Yearbook series yet. The Migration Policy Institute's estimate, built from ICE and CBP records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, counts about 980,000 removals and returns in the administration's first eighteen months, about 620,000 of them in fiscal 2025, at a fiscal 2026 pace of about 660,000. The Department of Homeland Security's public claims run higher: more than 675,000 deportations in the first year and more than 3 million total departures at eighteen months, the difference carried by an estimated category, self-deportations, for which no administrative count exists. Both accounts are printed in section four.

Deaths in ICE custody reached at least 36 in fiscal 2026 on a count of the agency's own published death reports, the highest fiscal-year total in ICE's records, against 25 in fiscal 2025 and a previous high of 28 in fiscal 2004. Fatal shootings by federal immigration agents during enforcement encounters in 2025–26 are documented at seven by Reuters through July 17, 2026, eight by ABC News, and nine by The Trace's tracker as of October 29, 2026; the seven cases documented by major outlets are tabled in section seven with only officially established facts. On court compliance, an Associated Press investigation counted at least 31 lawsuits in which district judges ruled the administration violated court orders in its first fifteen months, and more than 250 examples of noncompliance in immigration cases; in the District of Minnesota, Chief Judge Patrick J. Schiltz documented 96 orders ICE violated in January 2026 alone. On street violence, no federal statistical category for organized paramilitary political violence exists; the standard event data, ACLED's, counts 122 riot events in the United States in 2025, the fewest since its national tracking began in 2020, with one fatality across all of them and 97 percent of the year's demonstrations involving no violence.

The Two Series

The Department of Homeland Security's Office of Homeland Security Statistics defines the terms, and this report uses its definitions throughout. A removal is the compulsory and confirmed movement of an inadmissible or deportable noncitizen out of the United States based on an order of removal; a removed person faces administrative and criminal consequences on reentry. A return is the confirmed movement of an inadmissible or deportable noncitizen out of the United States not based on an order of removal; from fiscal 2009 the Yearbook splits returns into administrative returns and enforcement returns. An expulsion is a removal carried out under the CDC's Title 42 public-health authority between March 2020 and May 11, 2023. The three are separate series in every table below.

One statutory change bends the removals series and is printed here so the bend is not mistaken for enforcement volume alone. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, enacted September 30, 1996 and effective April 1, 1997, replaced the separate exclusion and deportation proceedings with a single removal proceeding, created expedited removal, under which DHS officers issue removal orders without an immigration judge, and expanded mandatory detention. Recorded removals rise from 69,680 in fiscal 1996 to 114,430 in fiscal 1997 to 174,810 in fiscal 1998; part of that step reflects the new categories and processes. Returns show no comparable discontinuity, because the return mechanism predates the act and continued under it. Fiscal years are assigned to administrations by the convention used by the Migration Policy Institute and Pew Research Center: the fiscal year beginning the October before inauguration is counted to the incoming administration.

The Annual Ledger, 1981–2023

The complete annual series, from Table 39 of the Yearbook of Immigration Statistics 2023, "DHS Repatriations: Fiscal Years 1892 to 2023." Values in that edition are rounded to the nearest ten; earlier editions differ slightly, and the largest revision is noted in section ten.

Expulsions under Title 42, same table, separate series: fiscal 2020, 206,790; fiscal 2021, 1,071,070; fiscal 2022, 1,103,970; fiscal 2023, 579,080. The peak single year for removals is fiscal 2013, at 432,330. The peak single year for returns is fiscal 2000, at 1,675,880.

The Administrations, Totaled

Sums of the annual series above, by administration. Cross-check on the Clinton row: the Department of Homeland Security's February 17, 2016 letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, citing the 2013 Yearbook's Table 39, gives fiscal 1993–2000 removals of 869,646 and returns of 11,421,259, within 16 and 1 respectively of the 2023-edition sums printed here.

The Biden row is incomplete by construction: the 2023 Yearbook is the latest edition with a full Table 39, and fiscal 2024 has no published department-wide figure in that series. ICE's own Enforcement and Removal Operations reported 271,484 removals for fiscal 2024 in its annual report. The two series are not interchangeable: for fiscal 2023, ICE ERO reported 142,580 removals against the department-wide 183,360.

The second Trump term. The Office of Homeland Security Statistics has not published a detailed monthly enforcement report since January 2025. Two accounts of the period exist, and they do not agree. The Migration Policy Institute's fact sheet of October 2026, built from ICE and CBP data obtained by the Deportation Data Project under the Freedom of Information Act and authored by a former head of the DHS statistics office, estimates about 980,000 deportations (removals and returns) between January 20, 2025 and July 31, 2026: about 580,000 removals, about 300,000 enforcement returns, and about 110,000 administrative returns; about 620,000 in fiscal 2025; and a fiscal 2026 pace of about 660,000. ICE's own data series, as analyzed by USAFacts, gives 320,000 ICE deportations in fiscal 2025, a figure ICE's metadata states includes voluntary returns. The Department of Homeland Security has publicly claimed more than 675,000 deportations in the administration's first year, about 1.1 million deported as of early September 2026, and more than 3 million total departures at eighteen months. The department's departure totals rest substantially on self-deportations, a category with no statistical definition and no administrative count; the Migration Policy Institute estimates total departures, deportations and self-departures of persons resident at least one year combined, at 790,000 to 1,900,000 for the same eighteen months.

The Interior Ledger: Arrests, Detainers, Detention

ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations' administrative arrests, interior enforcement arrests for immigration violations, exclude Homeland Security Investigations criminal arrests. Sources: the Department of Homeland Security's Border Security Status Report, Q2 FY2023, Table E2, for fiscal 2016–2022; ICE's annual reports for fiscal 2023 (170,590) and fiscal 2024 (113,431). ICE had published no fiscal 2025 annual report as of this report, and no official ERO arrest total for fiscal 2025 or 2026 is printed here. A related but different measure: ICE detention book-ins reached 365,500 in 2025, up 29.7 percent from 2024, per USAFacts' analysis of ICE data; book-ins count admissions to detention, not arrests.

A detainer is ICE's request that another law-enforcement agency hold a person up to 48 hours beyond scheduled release so ICE can take custody. Detainer sources: ICE's fiscal 2019 ERO report as compiled in House Report 118-442 for fiscal 2017–2019 and 2021–2022; ICE's ERO FY 2020 Achievements for 2020; ICE's fiscal 2023 annual report for 2023; and ICE's fiscal 2024 annual report for 2024, whose figure is reported as nearly 150,000 and is printed here as approximate.

Detention population. Average daily population (ADP) is total detainee-days divided by days in the year, per ICE detention statistics; point-in-time counts are labeled as such. Fiscal 2017 ADP: about 38,000. Fiscal 2019 ADP: over 50,000. January 20, 2021, point-in-time: 14,195 adults (TRAC, from ICE detention data). Fiscal 2023 ADP: 28,289. Fiscal 2024 ADP: about 37,700. January 12, 2025, point-in-time: 39,703 adults (TRAC). Fiscal 2025 ADP: 47,549 per ICE's annual detention spreadsheet, 50,130 per the Deportation Data Project's FOIA daily records; the difference is treated in section ten. August 23, 2025, point-in-time: 61,226. January 15, 2026, point-in-time: about 73,000. Fiscal 2026 ADP through July 2026: about 66,000 (Migration Policy Institute).

The Deaths in Custody

Since fiscal 2018, appropriations law has required ICE to publish an individual report for each death in its custody, a category that includes deaths in a detention facility, in transit, in a hospital after emergency transfer, and certain deaths within 30 days of release. Annual totals below are counts of ICE's published reports, as compiled from the agency's Detainee Death Reporting page.

The previous high in ICE's records was 28 deaths in fiscal 2004, the first full year the agency tracked custody deaths; fiscal 2026 is the highest total in the series. Counters differ by one or two on the recent years, by fiscal-versus-calendar basis and by the date the list was read: an independent count of the same ICE list gives 24 for fiscal 2025, the Migration Policy Institute gives 37 for fiscal 2026, and KFF's calendar-year analysis counts 33 deaths in calendar 2025 against 31 in Detention Watch Network's count. The ranges are printed in section ten and the table above uses the fiscal-year counts of the ICE list.

One fiscal 2026 custody death was ruled a homicide by a medical examiner. Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, died on January 3, 2026 at Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas. The El Paso County Medical Examiner determined the cause of death was asphyxia due to neck and torso compression and classified the manner as homicide. ICE initially described the death as medical distress. A subsequent GAO review found the facility contractor had failed to submit required use-of-force and death reports.

The Fatal Encounters

No official consolidated federal count of fatal shootings by immigration agents is published. Reuters documented seven fatal shootings by ICE and CBP personnel through July 17, 2026. ABC News counted eight people fatally shot between March 15, 2025 and July 13, 2026. The Trace's tracker counted nine fatalities as of October 29, 2026. The trackers differ on the inclusion of off-duty shootings and deaths during vehicle pursuits. The seven cases below are those documented by major news outlets or official statements. In each case the Department of Homeland Security stated that the person shot posed a threat, in most cases a vehicle threat; in several cases, witnesses or video evidence have been reported to conflict with the initial official account. No agent had been criminally charged in any of these cases as of the latest reporting consulted.

One documented non-fatal shooting is recorded here because the charges that followed it were dropped: Marimar Martínez was shot by a CBP agent in Chicago on October 4, 2025 and survived; federal charges against her were later dismissed.

The Court Record

The figures in this section are counts of judicial findings, not characterizations by litigants. An Associated Press investigation published in May 2026 counted at least 31 lawsuits in which district judges ruled that the second Trump administration had violated court orders during its first fifteen months, and more than 250 examples of noncompliance by judges in immigration cases specifically. A Washington Post analysis, reported secondhand, put the share of decided cases in which the administration defied an order at roughly one-third. Reuters counted 4,421 rulings by more than 400 federal judges, as of February 2026, holding ICE's July 2025 mandatory-detention policy unlawful. Legal-tracker compilations count at least 35 show-cause orders since August 2025 requiring the administration to explain why it should not be held in contempt. The documented instances below carry the courts' own characterizations.

Alien Enemies Act flights. On March 15, 2025, Judge James Boasberg of the District of Columbia issued a temporary restraining order halting deportation flights to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act and directed that planes in the air turn around. The flights continued, and 261 Venezuelan nationals were delivered to El Salvador's CECOT prison. On April 16, 2025, Judge Boasberg found that probable cause exists to find the government in criminal contempt. On April 14, 2026, a divided panel of the D.C. Circuit, 2 to 1, terminated the contempt proceedings, the majority holding the original order insufficiently specific to support contempt.

Abrego Garcia. Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported to CECOT on March 15, 2025 despite a 2019 withholding-of-removal order; the government stated the deportation was an administrative error. On April 10, 2025, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the government must facilitate his return. Judge Paula Xinis of the District of Maryland subsequently found the administration had engaged in "willful and intentional noncompliance" with her orders. Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States in June 2025.

Third-country removals. In May 2025, after DHS deported men to South Sudan despite his injunction requiring notice and an opportunity to contest third-country removal, Judge Brian Murphy of the District of Massachusetts stated the actions were "unquestionably violative of this Court's order."

Minnesota habeas cases. In a January 2026 order, Chief Judge Patrick J. Schiltz of the District of Minnesota documented 96 court orders ICE had violated across 74 cases in that month and wrote: "ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence." He summoned the acting ICE director to appear and threatened contempt. Later summaries of the Minnesota record put the instances he identified at more than 200.

Unaccompanied minors. Judge Stephanie Gallagher of the District of Maryland found ICE had wrongfully removed more than 50 unaccompanied minors protected by court orders under a class settlement. She held DHS in civil contempt on August 6, 2026, and held DHS in contempt a second time on September 25, 2026 in the same matter. Per CNN's October 2026 review of the record, these were the only two instances in which a judge had formally held the administration in contempt.

The Street: What Is Counted, and What Is Not

No United States federal statistical series measures organized paramilitary political violence as a category. The FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting and NIBRS systems classify offenses, not the organizational character of offenders, and publish no paramilitary-violence count. The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI issue qualitative joint threat assessments, not event statistics. No official 2025–26 figure for organized paramilitary street violence exists to cite, and none is estimated here. No comprehensive federal count of protest-related arrests exists either; arrests at demonstrations are recorded, if at all, by thousands of state and local agencies.

The event data that does exist is ACLED's, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project, which codes political violence and demonstrations from media and partner reporting under a published codebook. Its United States counts: demonstrations in 2025 rose about 77 percent over 2024 to the highest annual level since 2020, with the Princeton Bridging Divides Initiative estimating almost 20,000 demonstrations; 97 percent of demonstrations involved no violence or police intervention. ACLED's riot category, violent demonstrations plus mob violence, recorded 122 events in 2025, the fewest since its United States tracking began in 2020, against 829 in 2020, 213 in 2021, 149 in 2022, 145 in 2023, and 155 in 2024. One fatality was recorded across all 122 riot events in 2025. Extremist-group activity in August 2025 stood at its lowest monthly level in over five years, 29 events involving radical groups, 21 of them involving white-nationalist groups. On October 18, 2025, ACLED recorded more than 1,950 "No Kings II" demonstrations among 2,866 demonstration events that month, the most demonstrations recorded in a single day in its United States data, and recorded the day's protests as essentially entirely peaceful. ACLED analyst statements of October 29, 2026 count more than 12,600 protests in 2026 through late October, nearly 6,600 of them immigration-related, for and against enforcement. ACLED's own methodology note applies: it builds event data from media and partner reports, under-covered places and events may be missed, and it codes armed clashes under categories other than riots.

Where the Sources Disagree

Yearbook editions. Fiscal 2019 removals read 359,885 in the 2019 Yearbook edition and 347,320 in the 2023 edition, a revision of 12,565. This report uses the 2023 edition throughout. Obama-era removal totals in circulation run from 3,060,440 (the 2023-edition sum used here) to about 3.1 million in press shorthand.

Agency series. Fiscal 2023 removals read 183,360 department-wide (OHSS) and 142,580 for ICE ERO alone; the gap is definitional. Fiscal 2019 ERO arrests read 143,099 in the DHS status report and 148,163 in ICE's own ERO report. Fiscal 2024's 271,484 removals are an ICE ERO figure; press coverage routinely presents it as the national total.

The second Trump term. The Migration Policy Institute's FOIA-based estimate of about 980,000 removals and returns in eighteen months stands against DHS claims of more than 675,000 deportations in the first year and more than 3 million total departures. The gap is driven by self-deportations, which have no administrative count; MPI's own total-departures estimate for the period runs 790,000 to 1,900,000.

Deaths. Fiscal 2025 custody deaths: 25 on the count of ICE's published reports used here, 24 on an independent count of the same list; calendar 2025: 33 (KFF) against 31 (Detention Watch Network). Fiscal 2026: at least 36 here, 37 per MPI. Fatal shootings of civilians by immigration agents: 7 (Reuters), 8 (ABC News), 9 (The Trace), differing on off-duty and pursuit cases.

Detention and detention litigation. Fiscal 2025 average daily population: 47,549 per ICE's spreadsheet, 50,130 per the Deportation Data Project's FOIA daily records, which include hold rooms, federal prisons, and medical facilities absent from ICE's published spreadsheet. Adverse rulings on the mandatory-detention policy: 4,421 rulings by more than 400 judges (Reuters, February 2026) against 2,400-plus cases and 350-plus judges in earlier compilations, the same litigation wave at different snapshot dates under different counting rules.

Sources and Method

This report was compiled from the primary statistical record where it exists: the Department of Homeland Security Office of Homeland Security Statistics, Yearbook of Immigration Statistics 2023, Table 39, for all removals, returns, and expulsions through fiscal 2023; ICE's annual reports for fiscal 2023 and fiscal 2024 and its published Detainee Death Reporting list; the DHS Border Security Status Report, Q2 FY2023 for the arrest series; TRAC's detention analyses of ICE data; the Migration Policy Institute's October 2026 fact sheet on second-term deportations, built from FOIA releases; the Associated Press's May 2026 investigation of court-order compliance and the court orders it rests on, including Chief Judge Schiltz's January 2026 order; Reuters' counts of fatal shootings and of mandatory-detention rulings; and ACLED's United States event data and monthly overviews. Figures that could not be verified against a solid source are not printed as numbers: no department-wide fiscal 2024 removals figure, no official ERO arrest total for fiscal 2025 or 2026, and no detainer totals for fiscal 2016 or 2025–26 appear in this report, because none was located in a published primary source. Fiscal-year figures are fiscal years throughout unless a calendar basis is stated. Removals, returns, and expulsions are kept as separate series in every table; any combined figure names its components. Where reputable sources disagree, both figures are printed with their sources, in the body and again in section ten. The file the desk read is clipped below.