In a historic move, the United States is on track to deporting over 600,000 illegal immigrants by the end of this year, according to US President’s ‘border czar‘ Tom Homan. While at Axios’ Future of Defence Summit on Wednesday (US time), said that everyone who was in the country illegally should stay warned. “You’re not off the table. If we find you, we’re going to arrest you,” he added.

Adding to the conversation on ramped-up immigration crackdown at Trump’s behest, Homan said that 70% of people the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested so far have been labelled as criminals. The other 30 to 35% were classified as “national security threats without criminal pasts,” as noted in the Axios report.

Homeland Security doubles down on deportation agenda

The White House border czar’s latest statement echoed what DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin emphasised in an official news release dated September 2025.

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“The numbers don’t lie: 2 million illegal aliens have been removed or self-deported in just 250 days— proving that President Trump’s policies and Secretary Noem’s leadership are working and making American communities safe,” she said, while also insisting that the Trump administration was close to cracking historic numbers.

Just this week, Homeland Security’s Tricia McLaughlin spoke to Fox News, and hailed Trump’s efforts in backing them by jump-starting “an agency that was vilified and barred from doing its job for the last four years.” Meanwhile, the admin officials also insisted that 515,000 people have already been deported since the MAGA leader took back the reins.

Trump border czar Tom Homan, DHS questioned over immigration data

Countering his claims, the US outlet’s Brittany Gibson said the numbers he was highlighting didn’t align with ICE’s bi-monthly report shared with Congress. In his response, the border czar argued that the data sent to lawmakers is “behind” and “it’s how you read the raw data.”

Much like Gibson, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, challenged the “NOT trustworthy” numbers on X.

Stating that the Department of Homeland Security had stopped publishing monthly immigration data after Trump’s inauguration, he added, “We know from previous data releases that the large 515,000 figure counts things like visa-holders turned away at airports as ‘illegal migrants deported,’ and the 1.6 million number is from an anti-immigration group using inapposite data.”

On the flip side, Homeland Security ultimately took charge of the situation by dismissing the claims as “mental gymnastics gone wild.” In a Tuesday tweet, they penned, “Breaking: chronically online X troll, who complains every day that we’re deporting illegals, now complains that we aren’t actually *aren’t* deporting illegals… Not to worry, the deportations will continue.”

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US deportation tracker: Reports

An Axios review discovered that numbers relating to people being held in immigration detention centres had jumped by over 50% since the Republican president came back to office. The growing figures stand in line with Trump’s heavy promises tied to kicking off the largest mass deportation in US history.

According to NBC News’ deportation tracker’s early October update, 59,207 migrants were in ICE detention based on “data current through September 25, 2025.” Of these, 28.7% are with criminal convictions, 25.4% with pending criminal charges, 10.7% are fast-tracked for deportation and 46.9% listed as “other immigration violator.”