Which US agencies publish 2025 deportation statistics for criminal nationals and where to find their reports?
Executive summary
The primary federal publishers of 2025 deportation statistics—broken out to show criminality or "criminal nationals"—are the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) (including component press releases and its Office of Homeland Security Statistics), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) via specific Title 42 and encounter reports; independent projects and research groups (the Deportation Data Project, Migration Policy Institute, Prison Policy Initiative, TRAC and media outlets such as The Guardian) republish, reprocess, and interpret those agency datasets for journalists and researchers [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8].
1. DHS — centralized statements and monthly statistical tables
DHS issues both high-level press announcements summarizing removals and voluntary departures and also publishes detailed statistical series via its Office of Homeland Security Statistics (OHSS) monthly enforcement tables covering encounters, arrests, book‑ins/outs, detentions, and removals that include breakdowns by citizenship and criminality; the OHSS monthly tables are updated on a regular schedule (typically the third Thursday) and the DHS pressroom carries headlines and totals such as the department’s 2025 removal tallies [1] [2].
2. ICE — operational tables and biweekly detention/deportation releases
ICE is the agency that publishes the most granular operational deportation metrics for ICE enforcement and removal operations, including tables on arrests, detentions, and removals, noting that some ICE statistics are published with a quarter‑in‑arrears policy and periodic corrections; ICE’s public "Enforcement and Removal Operations Statistics" page and its detention management releases (initial book‑ins, currently detained by criminality, and removals) are the core primary sources for deportation counts and criminal‑status breakdowns [3] [9].
3. CBP — border encounters, expulsions and Title 42 reporting
CBP releases statistics on border encounters and expulsions which are essential context for total removals and for Title 42 expulsions specifically; DHS and ICE pages often point readers to CBP for comprehensive Title 42 expulsion data, and CBP’s encounter reports are the source for border flow counts that agencies use to contextualize interior deportation activity [3].
4. Independent aggregators and FOIA‑based datasets: Deportation Data Project, TRAC, Migration Policy
Because agency releases can omit event‑level detail or lag in publication, independent aggregators like the Deportation Data Project collect and publish ICE datasets (arrests, detainer requests, detentions) and make them searchable; TRAC and academic groups such as Migration Policy Institute process government releases to produce fiscal‑year tallies and analysis; these third‑party projects are essential for reporters seeking cleaned, event‑level or time‑series views of "criminal" versus "non‑criminal" deportations [4] [10] [5] [7].
5. Media and watchdogs — interpretive frames and data caveats
Investigative outlets and advocacy researchers (The Guardian, Prison Policy Initiative, Cato, etc.) republish agency tables and highlight discrepancies—such as high shares of detainees without convictions or ICE coding issues—which underscores that raw agency totals require careful reading and often cannot by themselves answer questions about "criminal nationals" without attention to definitions (conviction vs. pending charge vs. immigration violations), release lag, and recoding practices [8] [6] [11] [9].
6. Where to find the 2025 reports (direct links and how to use them)
For primary 2025 numbers, consult DHS press releases and the OHSS monthly tables on DHS.gov, ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations statistics and detention management tables on ICE.gov (remember ICE notes data are often one quarter in arrears), and CBP’s encounter/Title 42 reports on CBP.gov; for cleaned or FOIA‑derived datasets, use the Deportation Data Project and TRAC, and for interpretive analysis consult Migration Policy Institute, Prison Policy Initiative and major outlets that archive ICE releases such as The Guardian [1] [2] [3] [4] [10] [5] [8].
7. Pitfalls, definitions and the politics behind the numbers
Official tallies are shaped by definitional choices (who counts as a "criminal" — convicted, charged, or simply subject to an immigration violation), publication lag, and intentional framing in department press releases that can emphasize either "worst of the worst" removals or aggregate removal totals for political messaging; researchers should triangulate agency tables with independent datasets to avoid being misled by headline claims [3] [1] [6].