The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that 2 million illegal aliens have been removed from the United States.
In a press release Tuesday, the Department said that 400,000 illegal immigrants had been deported, with another 1.6 million illegal aliens having self-deported. With another 10,000 immigration enforcement agents coming soon, those numbers are set to ramp up.
“The numbers don’t lie: 2 million illegal aliens have been removed or self-deported in just 250 days— proving that President Trump’s policies and Secretary Noem’s leadership are working and making American communities safe,” DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said in a
press release Tuesday. “Ramped-up immigration enforcement targeting the worst of the worst is removing more and more criminal illegal aliens off our streets every day and is sending a clear message to anyone else in this country illegally: Self-deport or we will arrest and deport you.”
DHS said in its release that it has conducted more than 400,000 deportations in the 250 days since President Donald Trump took office. Immigration law enforcement agencies are on pace to deport nearly 600,000 illegal immigrants by the end of Trump's first year. They also said that 1.6 million illegal aliens have self-deported.
DHS has previously used the
1.6 million figure. It comes from a report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), citing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The CIS report analyzed raw data from the Current Population Survey, a survey of households conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which showed an "unprecedented" decline in the total foreign-born population of 2.2 million, including a decline in the illegal alien population of 1.6 million. Specifically, the report estimated an illegal immigrant population of 14.2 million, down from 15.8 million in January. CIS hypothesized that the decrease was due to out-migration resulting from stepped-up immigration law enforcement.
However, the report included several important caveats. First, the estimate is based on trends, since the underlying data needed to estimate the legal immigrant population is not complete. Second, CIS analyzed that increased immigration enforcement may have led some immigrants to claim they were born in the United States; though declines in the unweighted data led CIS to conclude that was unlikely. Third, CIS noted that it is possible that the analysis may have overstated the actual decline in illegal population, as illegal immigrants may have become reluctant to answer the Current Population Survey due to the increased enforcement.
DHS also stated that its ramped-up enforcement has yielded a strong downward trend in immigration: for the fourth straight month, Customs and Border Protection released zero illegal aliens into the country. DHS also cited a study from the United Nations claiming that the Trump administration's immigration controls and transit restrictions at the Darien Gap in Panama have led to a
97 percent reduction in northward migration from Central and South America. DHS's
own data identified a 99.98 percent reduction in crossings of the Darien Gap in May and June 2025. The study found that 49 percent of migrants said they stopped trying to migrate because they thought it would be impossible to enter the country; another 46 percent stopped because they thought they would be detained or deported.
Trump administration border czar Tom Homan said Monday that deportations would rapidly accelerate.
"[Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is getting 10,000 more agents," Homan told
Fox News Monday night. "Right now, they've got 5,000 deportation officers. We're tripling the size of the workforce. We're adding more detention beds. We're adding more flights and more transportation. So the numbers are gonna explode over the coming year."
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act allocated funding for ICE to hire 10,000 additional agents. So far, the number of applications for those positions has
jumped to 150,000.
