Immigration and Customs Enforcement has arrested more than 602,000 illegal immigrants in the year and a half since President Donald Trump took office and unleashed a mass deportation operation, according to federal data shared with the Washington Examiner.The 18-month figure, even when cut by one-third, blows past any one-year record high seen during previous administrations. The 602,000 arrests are also higher than the four-year total arrests seen during Trump’s first term or during former President Joe Biden‘s tenure.However, several ICE officers and immigration experts told the Washington Examiner they have questions about the precise number of ICE arrests given the variety of numbers that the Trump administration has touted, often different by hundreds of thousands.

What the numbers show

The previous record high for annual arrests was set during the eight-year Obama administration. ICE arrested 311,000 people in fiscal 2011. More than 1.2 million people were arrested from 2009 to 2012, as well as an additional 641,000 in former President Barack Obama’s second term, historical ICE reports show.During Trump’s first term in office from 2017 to 2021, ICE arrested 548,000 illegal immigrants. Approximately 500,000 ICE arrests occurred across all four years of the Biden administration.Immediately after Trump took office in January 2025, ICE began making arrests. Under Biden, ICE was only allowed to arrest a small portion of the total illegal immigrant population. Trump rescinded those priorities for arrest, and arrests quickly rose to between 500 and 1,000 per day.As of April, ICE was reaching nearly 1,000 arrests every day — well over double the average seen over the past decade.Adam Isacson, director for oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, said “something dramatically changed” this spring when former Sen. Markwayne Mullin took over the Department of Homeland Security from ousted Secretary Kristi Noem.Arrests quietly ramped up to an average of 1,400 per day, although White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller’s demands for 2,000 a day continued to go unmet.Arrests nearly double