The pace of deportations remains concerningly slow through the first nine months of President Trump’s second term, a watchdog has warned.
While the administration has vowed to execute a mass deportation campaign of historic proportions, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has removed just over 200,000 illegals since January — a drop in the bucket relative to a total illegal alien population that is likely far north of 20 million.
“It’s the ICE number that I think we really need to focus on. That number has to grow MANY times over. We need commas in our ICE deportation numbers to be millions,” Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, told Border Hawk.
WATCHDOG: Lagging ICE Deportations Need to Grow by Orders of Magnitude
The pace of deportations remains concerningly slow through the first nine months of President Trump’s second term, a watchdog has warned.
While the administration has vowed to execute a mass deportation… pic.twitter.com/lKOWQVlBRA
— Border Hawk (@BorderHawkNews) October 2, 2025
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently announced that more than two million illegal aliens have been flushed out of the U.S. since President Trump took office, but Howell sees that figure as a “huge red flag” due to the way it was calculated.
“DHS hasn’t backed that up with actual specific data,” Howell stated. “ICE deportations, the ones that people think of when they think of mass deportations — taking someone and getting them out of the country — they’re at low levels. They’re around 200,000 as of a month or so ago, and probably going to end up at 400,000 by the end of the year… That’s Obama-level low.”
Need to get the numbers up in a very big way https://t.co/BuXBk6PpZB
— Mike Howell (@MHowellTweets) September 30, 2025
Howell explained that ICE is effectively still operating under the same policy restrictions implemented by the Obama and Biden regimes, primarily targeting the “worst of the worst” and “criminal illegal aliens.”
“You’re limiting the scope of your operations by having that be the dominant focus… and those types of operations take a lot more manpower,” he said.
“In targeted criminal operations, you show up early in the morning, you have to work with law enforcement, it’s a more dangerous situation versus the Eisenhower era where they were basically just going to agricultural sites and getting as many people as they possibly could.”
Howell asserts the administration is running “mass communications, not mass deportations” by emphasizing “quality” of apprehensions over quantity of removals.
“The truth of the matter is there is a divide among the administration as to what ‘mass deportation’ meant, or should mean, or redefining it. You have some people in the camp who are truly committed to the cause at the most principled level,” Howell said.
NYT/Siena Poll – Do you support or oppose Deporting immigrants living in the U.S. illegally back to their home countries?
🟢 Support: 54% (+11)
🟤 Oppose: 43%
——
• Men: 65-33 (+32)
• Women: 45-51 (-6)
—
• White: 62-37 (+25)
• Black: 34-59 (-25)
• Hispanic: 27-65 (-38)
•… pic.twitter.com/VsPMUAy97j— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) September 30, 2025
Howell named President Trump, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller, and Border Czar Tom Homan as top figures in the administration who are determined to keep their promises on mass deportations, but warned they are battling stiff opposition from political opportunists and economic interests subverting the will of the American people.
