ICE says 2026 was its biggest enforcement year ever

The numbers, as ICE reports them

ICE recorded 483,200 deportations in fiscal year 2026, the highest in the agency's history, and over 491,000 immigration arrests in the same year, according to the agency's own account. These are ICE's figures, released by ICE, and they should be read that way. But the size of the claim is the story: the agency is saying it removed more people in one fiscal year than it had in any year since it was created. m:…8813

The comparison ICE chooses is with the three full fiscal years under the Biden Administration. ICE says its fiscal 2026 deportation total exceeds the combined total of fiscal 2022, 2023 and 2024, and that its arrest total is greater than the combined total of those three years as well. That is a striking way to frame a single year, and it is a political frame as much as a statistical one: the agency is measuring itself against the previous administration's entire record, not against last year. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin attributes the record-breaking performance to President Trump's leadership, which makes the framing explicit. m:…8813

The monthly figures show the pace accelerating into the autumn. August 2026 set a record for the most arrests by ICE in a single month at 50,925, and September 2026 saw over 48,000 arrests and 44,000 removals, which ICE describes as a 300% increase in arrests over the average September during the Biden Administration. The implication is that the record year was not evenly spread. It built through the summer and peaked at the end of the fiscal year, which raises the obvious question for the new fiscal year: whether the pace holds, rises, or falls back once the record is banked. m:…8813

Two cases from this week

The week's releases show what the enforcement pace looks like case by case. ICE says Rony Alexander Gomez-Alberto attempted to storm the cockpit of a United Airlines plane on November 9, 2026, and was charged with felony bomb threat, terroristic threats, and disorderly conduct. ICE says Gomez-Alberto had been deported twice before his third entry into the United States, and it lodged a detainer with local authorities on November 10, 2026, asking to be notified before any release. The detainer is the routine part of the story. The cockpit is the part that made it national news. m:…7536

The same release carries the policy argument the department is building around cases like this one. Mullin stated that ICE has arrested 2,312 known or suspected terrorists between January 20, 2025, and November 10, 2026, and the department says it is developing anti-fraud policies to enforce document-fraud law, giving ICE attorneys greater authority to pursue enforcement actions against immigration attorneys who file false asylum claims. The message is that the agency sees the asylum system itself as part of the enforcement problem, and that it intends to go after the lawyers as well as the applicants. m:…7536

The second case is from Chicago Heights, where ICE arrested Jose Juan Garnica-Naranjo on November 10, 2026. ICE says Garnica-Naranjo intentionally struck an ICE officer with his vehicle, dragging the officer, who was hospitalized with a leg injury. ICE says Garnica-Naranjo had been deported seven times, all in 2013. The release is one of a series from the agency highlighting arrests in Illinois, and it is written to make an argument about cooperation: the agency wants local authorities to hold people for it, and it is using individual cases to press that point. m:…8812

What to watch

Mullin stated there has been a 1,600% increase in assaults against ICE officers, and attributed the rise in violence to anti-ICE rhetoric from sanctuary politicians. That figure comes from the secretary, not from an independent count in the release, and the attribution is his. It is worth noting because it shows how the department is explaining the friction its own pace creates: more arrests mean more encounters, and more encounters mean more conflict, and the department is blaming the conflict on its critics rather than on the pace. m:…8812

The honest way to read the record year is as a claim about capacity. ICE says it removed 483,200 people and arrested more than 491,000 in a single fiscal year, and it says both totals beat three prior years combined. If the figures hold up, the agency has shown it can operate at a scale nobody had previously attempted. The question the numbers do not answer is what that scale costs, in detention capacity, in court backlogs, in community cooperation, and in the encounters that end with an officer in the hospital. Those are the numbers to watch in fiscal 2027. m:…8813