I do not believe the actual deportation and self-deportation numbers are anywhere near the roughly 3 million claimed in Department of Homeland Security press releases.
This is more than a hunch. The published figures appear mathematically impossible.
If a population roughly equal to that of New Mexico left the United States, there should be visible statistical evidence.
That is a serious problem, which is why the Oversight Project has announced a lawsuit to force the DHS to release the underlying data.
Some people will be surprised that a Trump-aligned legal and investigative organization, best known for exposing the autopen scandal, is suing the administration’s Department of Homeland Security.
Here is why.
Trump’s central promise
Immigration enforcement has been the central thesis of President Trump’s political career.
It began with “build the wall” after he descended the golden escalator in 2015. He returned to office with 77 million votes after promising mass deportation.
Agenda 47 contained only 20 major promises. The first was to secure the border, and the administration deserves enormous credit for doing so — even as House Republicans refuse to codify those gains without attaching amnesty for illegal farmworkers.
The second promise was to conduct the largest deportation operation in American history.
Trump repeatedly indicated that this meant surpassing President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1954 operation, which some estimates say reduced the illegal population by 31% in a single year.
With two and a half years remaining in office, Trump is entering the period when presidents begin thinking seriously about legacy.
If “promises made, promises kept” is to mean anything, the deportation machinery must begin operating at full capacity now. Only then can removals reach the millions during the administration’s final years and surpass Eisenhower’s record.
Trump has the resources to do it. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is better funded and equipped than ever.
The administration should direct ICE toward high-density workplaces where illegal labor is concentrated — factories, farms, hotels, restaurants, warehouses, and meatpacking facilities — while imposing serious penalties on employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens.
That is how the numbers begin rising rapidly.
Surpassing Eisenhower would be the natural culmination of Trump’s political career. It would fulfill the promise at the center of his movement and provide the necessary answer to the Biden years, when roughly 10 million illegal aliens were allowed into the country and dispersed throughout American communities.
Those illegal aliens are still here. Trump can still remove them.
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Samuel Corum/Sipa/Bloomberg/Getty Images
The amnesty lobby needs inflated numbers
The second reason for demanding transparency is that the amnesty lobby does not care what Trump promised.
Many Republicans rolled their eyes when he pledged mass deportation. They quickly began trying to narrow enforcement to a small category of the “worst of the worst” criminals.
The reason is obvious: The amnesty lobby, especially its Republican wing, is in love with cheap illegal labor. Its members fiercely oppose worksite enforcement, even though worksite enforcement is the only realistic way to generate removals on the scale Trump promised.
They are already preparing their next push for what they will call “comprehensive immigration reform,” the familiar euphemism for mass amnesty.
The Dignidad Act has roughly 20 Republican co-sponsors. The Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act of 2026, another amnesty proposal for illegal farm laborers, has attracted more than 40.
Congress is also considering reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Over time, that law has encouraged migration from noncontiguous countries and fed migrants into labor- and sex-trafficking networks.
It has also created a funding stream for left-wing nongovernmental organizations now suing the Trump administration, undermining both the war on fraud and the work once associated with the DOGE.
The House and Senate are full of pro-amnesty Republicans financed by industries that profit from cheap labor. Most are not going anywhere soon.
Their preferred argument is predictable: Enough people have already been deported. Now it is time to make a deal.
We will not allow them to make that case using inflated numbers.
The amnesty lobby used the same tactic during the Obama administration. It combined border returns with formal removals to portray Barack Obama as the “deporter in chief.”
The goal was to make Obama look tough enough to create political space for amnesty. That strategy produced the Gang of Eight amnesty bill, which collapsed after a national populist revolt, and the unlawful Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
That revolt also helped create the conditions for Trump’s rise.
I was born at night, but not last night.
The amnesty lobby is preparing to run the same play again.
The numbers don’t add up
The third reason for the lawsuit is simple: The public deserves the real figures.
The DHS recently gave several media outlets the following statement:
In President Trump’s first year back in office, more than 3 million illegal aliens have left the U.S. because of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, including an estimated 2.2 million self-deportations. As of June 24, we have now deported over 948,000 illegal aliens and arrested over 981,000 illegal aliens.
Consider the first sentence.
It refers specifically to Trump’s first year back in office, from January 20, 2025, through January 20 of this year. The same claim appeared on the DHS website.
If 3 million people left and 2.2 million supposedly self-deported, that leaves approximately 800,000 formal deportations or removals.
But DHS has provided no evidence supporting the claim that 2.2 million people self-deported.
The administration has pointed to the CBP Home app, yet only about 72,000 people reportedly used it to leave as of March. I have reason to believe even that number may be overstated.
That leaves a gulf of more than 2 million people.
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Blaze Media Illustration
If a population roughly equal to that of New Mexico left the United States, there should be visible statistical evidence. School enrollments, rental markets, remittance flows, employment records, border crossings, airline bookings, and foreign-government data should all reflect it.
The DHS should be able to produce that evidence.
Now consider the claimed 800,000 deportations during Trump’s first year.
The department’s fiscal year 2027 Congressional Budget Justification states that the DHS and ICE removed or returned 442,637 illegal aliens during fiscal year 2025, which included several months of the Biden administration.
That figure combines removals, which are closer to formal deportations, with returns, which often occur at the border.
Even with those categories combined, the official budget figure is little more than half the number implied by the press release.
The second sentence creates an even larger problem. If 800,000 people were deported during Trump’s first year, how could the cumulative total be only 948,000 seven months into 2026?
That would mean the administration deported only 148,000 people during those seven months.
The numbers do not add up.
Anyone who travels the country, follows social media, or watches television knows skepticism about these claims is now widespread. That is creating a political problem, especially among young Republican men who rank immigration enforcement and national sovereignty among their highest priorities.
Fortunately, the problem is fixable.
The administration can expand full-scale worksite enforcement and produce real, rapidly increasing removal numbers. It can then release those figures transparently, every month, with the same attention given to the jobs report.
Mass deportation is part of the glue holding Trump’s coalition together.
Regular, verifiable reporting would generate enthusiasm and demonstrate that the administration has not retreated from its defining promise.
The Oversight Project does not want Trump to fail. We want him to succeed.
That begins with knowing the real numbers.
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