Deportations a Day: Mullin's 3,600 Claim vs. the Data

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said on Tuesday that the government is deporting roughly 3,600 people a day, a pace that would add up to about 1.3 million deportations a year. Every public count of deportations a day, including the Department of Homeland Security’s own earlier tallies, points to a rate about half that, which leaves the number Mullin chose to anchor the post-midterm enforcement debate unverified.

Mullin gave the figure in a Nov. 10 interview on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle,” where, according to Fox News, he vowed “zero change” in enforcement after Republicans’ midterm losses. “We haven’t slowed down at all,” he said, describing a shift toward “going after the worst of the worst.” He also said that “Amnesty will never be on the table.” The Fox report did not say what the 3,600 figure counts or what period it covers, and DHS has not published a breakdown.

The number is likely to become the administration’s baseline in the fight that opens in January, when Democrats take control of the House with plans for subpoenas and oversight of ICE, while President Trump has mused that his crackdown may have been too tough even as the White House vows no slowdown and rules out amnesty. DHS stopped publishing its detailed monthly enforcement reports in January 2025, according to the Migration Policy Institute, so outside counts built from Freedom of Information Act data are the main way to test official claims.

How 3,600 deportations a day compares with other counts

Migration Policy Institute: about 980,000 deportations by ICE and Customs and Border Protection, counting removals and returns, from Jan. 20, 2025, through July 31, 2026. That is about 1,760 a day, a calculation from MPI’s figures. MPI’s monthly average for May through July 2026, about 55,000, implies roughly 1,800 a day.
DHS’s own July statements: Mullin announced 845,931 deportations through July 16, 2026, and a separate DHS statement cited more than 985,000 as of July 12, as documented by MPI. Measured from Inauguration Day, those work out to roughly 1,560 to 1,830 a day, based on the DHS figures.
The White House: nearly 1.2 million people “deported or removed,” in a release dated Oct. 20, 2026. Spread over the 21 months since Jan. 20, 2025, that is fewer than 1,900 a day, a calculation from the White House number.
ICE’s posted statistics: 356,389 deportations in fiscal 2026 as of late July, ABC News reported on July 21.

Squaring 3,600 with those counts would require the daily pace to have roughly doubled since summer, and no public data yet show that. A broader measure does not fit either. The department has claimed more than 3 million total departures over the same 18 months, about 2 million of them self-departures, according to MPI, which comes to about 5,400 a day based on the DHS figure.

Court orders are rising, but an order is not a removal

The strongest support for a faster pace comes from the immigration courts. Immigration judges issued 838,146 deportation orders in fiscal 2026, including 81,892 in September 2026 alone, according to data compiled by TRAC at Syracuse University. September’s total works out to about 2,700 orders a day. An order is not a deportation, though. Many are issued in absentia against people who are not in custody, and each removal still requires detention, travel documents and a country willing to accept the person. TRAC counted 3,037,800 cases still pending at the end of September 2026.

Mullin’s description of the priorities draws similar scrutiny. Of the roughly 980,000 deportations MPI counted, about 20 percent involved people with a criminal conviction, and 31 percent of formal removals did, compared with an average of 44 percent from fiscal 2009 through 2021. DHS’s position is that anyone in the country unlawfully is subject to removal. In one case reported by the Associated Press this week, the department said two brothers with pending asylum applications had “overstayed in defiance of our laws,” adding that a pending application does not confer legal status.

The verification problem is not confined to critics of the policy. Andrew Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors lower immigration levels, wrote in October that he could not confirm White House enforcement figures through official sources, as noted in earlier coverage of the MPI count.

The practical effect is that Congress, the courts and the public will keep arguing over numbers no one outside DHS can audit. A Democratic House is likely to press for the underlying data through hearings or subpoenas. If DHS resumes publishing monthly enforcement tables, the 3,600 figure can be tested directly. Until then, the most complete public measures put the pace closer to 1,800 deportations a day.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.

Sources

Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Esq.

Administrator

Vasanth Vaidyanathan is an immigration attorney with over 20 years of experience focused exclusively on U.S. immigration and nationality law. He holds an LL.M. from California Western School of Law, San Diego and advises individuals and businesses on employment and family-based immigration matters, including H-1B, PERM, EB categories, and adjustment of status. He has also been a featured speaker at immigration seminars across the U.S. To reach Vasanth visit: https://www.vnathan.com/

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