AP investigation revealed DHS, ICE, State Department and USCIS immigration data had gone stale amid Trump's deportation push

On March 15, 2026, an Associated Press investigation, carried by the Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, and other outlets, reported that key federal immigration-enforcement data sources had gone stale or inconsistent under the Trump administration's mass-deportation push. The Department of Homeland Security's Office of Homeland Security Statistics, which has tracked immigration data since 1872, had not updated its monthly enforcement reports since early 2025; the page where those reports appear was marked "delayed while it is under review." ICE's public arrest-and-removal dashboard, launched in December 2023 with a promised quarterly cadence, had not updated past January 2025, and its annual report, typically released in December, had not been published as of mid-March 2026. State Department visa-issuance data had not updated since August 2025, and USCIS statistics had not updated since October 2025.

DHS meanwhile made inconsistent and unverifiable public claims about deportation totals: a Jan. 20 news release put the figure at more than 675,000, a second release the next day put it at 622,000, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told Congress on March 4 the figure was 700,000. DHS separately claimed 2.2 million people had "self-deported," without explaining how the figure was derived, and it did not respond to detailed questions about why routine data releases had stopped. Researchers — including Julia Gelatt of the Migration Policy Institute and Graeme Blair of the University of California, Berkeley's Deportation Data Project — said the gaps left them unable to independently verify the administration's enforcement claims.

Updates

2026-03-30 — Deportation Data Project FOIA data still showed reliability gaps [2]

The Deportation Data Project, which had sued under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain ICE arrest and removal data, said in a March 30, 2026 release that the FOIA-obtained dataset still had reliability problems, including redacted case categories and omitted hospital-detention stints.

2026-07-15 — ICE's mandated detention report still unpublished, lawsuits followed [3]

A Marshall Project investigation found the pattern continuing: ICE's mandated semimonthly detention report had not been published since April 9, 2026, prompting at least three separate lawsuits, including one from the conservative Oversight Project.

2026-07-20 — DHS released ICE detention data after 100-day gap, arrests hit record [4][5]

On July 20, 2026, DHS published ICE detention data for the first time in more than 100 days — the longest gap between releases in recent years, on figures previously published roughly every two weeks under a congressional mandate. The release showed a combined 43,318 people booked into ICE or CBP detention facilities in June, with detainees who had no criminal record making up 37% of the detained population, up from 6% in January 2025. A DHS spokesperson said the release reflected the administration's continued focus on arresting and deporting people with criminal records.

2026-07-24 — DHS statistics chief Rosenblum resigned, cited administration's 'war on facts' [6][7]

On July 24, 2026, Marc Rosenblum, executive director of DHS's Office of Homeland Security Statistics — the office whose stalled reporting this entry documents — resigned after more than a decade at the department. In a LinkedIn post over the following weekend he wrote he was "thrilled to end my relationship with the current administration," citing a "war on immigrants," "war on feds," and "war on facts." A DHS spokesperson said the agency would not comment on personal decisions.