October 30, 2025 Dear Colleague, The transformation in U.S. immigration enforcement taking place at the U.S.-Mexico border and in communities across the United States is tangibly captured in recently released data for fiscal year (FY) 2025. Though the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has provided only partial data, a new Migration Policy Institute (MPI) short read uses the available statistics to analyze the results of a year characterized by a sharp decline in border encounters and a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) tempo that has netted more deportations from the U.S. interior than the number of encounters recorded by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at the Southwest border—for the first time since at least FY 2014. The nearly 444,000 encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border in FY 2025 mark a sharp decline from the 2.1 million recorded the prior year. They also showcase the return of a pattern last seen more than a decade ago: Encounters of Mexican single adults and unaccompanied children from northern Central America predominate once again, after a period of significant diversification of arriving nationalities. While detailed FY 2025 data about ICE arrests and removals have not been released since January, there is no doubt that interior enforcement has risen. Based on the latest publicly available figures, MPI estimates that ICE conducted about 340,000 deportations in FY 2025, including noncitizens with a formal order of removal and immigration detainees who chose to end their detention with a voluntary departure. This would mark a level of activity 25 percent higher than the 271,000 deportations recorded by ICE in FY 2024. While these fiscal year numbers do not include deportations conducted by CBP, which DHS has yet to release, the Trump administration says it is on pace for nearly 600,000 deportations overall by the end of its first year back in office. About 685,000 deportations were carried out by the Biden administration in FY 2024. Beyond more detailed analysis of border enforcement activity, the analysis looks at where deportations are occurring and by originating agency; it also focuses on immigrant detention, including the share of detainees with a criminal record, which fell to 35 percent in September 2025, down from 65 percent in October 2024. The short read also makes the case for a return to regular reporting of detailed data on immigration enforcement across the various DHS immigration agencies. “At a time when immigration enforcement has been deemed a high federal priority, it is in the national interest for the government to provide transparent, regular, reliable immigration enforcement data,” it concludes. Read the full piece here: www.migrationpolicy.org/news/new-era-enforcement-trump-2. | 
