What are the verified ICE removal and deportation counts for 2025, month by month?
Executive summary
Verified, authoritative month-by-month ICE removal counts for calendar year 2025 are not publicly available in a single, clean series; DHS/OHSS and ICE publish periodic cumulative and semi‑monthly reports and tables that can be used to construct monthly series, but researchers note gaps and data errors in ICE’s raw releases and independent projects have had to infer or adjust monthly figures [1] [2] [3]. Independent analysts produce divergent annual totals—Brookings estimates roughly 310,000–315,000 removals in 2025 using a reconstructed monthly series, while Migration Policy Institute and some media aggregations cite higher totals (~340,000 and ~327,000 respectively)—underscoring that any month-by-month table available in public reporting is an estimate, not a single “verified” official series [4] [5] [6].
1. What the question really asks — and why it’s hard to answer
The user requests a verified monthly accounting of ICE removals for 2025, which implies a single agency-sanctioned, month-by-month tally; however, ICE and DHS publish a mix of semi‑monthly cumulative removal tallies, detention-management snapshots, and separate component tables, and the Office of Homeland Security Statistics (OHSS) updates an operational monthly table that is the DHS system of record—but these sources do not present one straightforward, error‑free monthly removals CSV for 2025 that independent researchers agree on [1] [3].
2. Official sources and the explicit gaps they disclose
DHS’s OHSS states it updates monthly on the third Thursday and constructs its “Persist Dataset” from component operational reports, positioning itself as the standard source for monthly operational numbers, yet that process depends on component data quality and cleaning [1]. ICE’s own semi‑monthly detention management reports have been the historical public source for removals but are reported as cumulative and have changed formats; researchers such as TRAC note ICE tracks removals cumulatively by fiscal year rather than clean calendar-month series, complicating month-by-month extraction [3]. The Deportation Data Project published ICE operational data through October 15, 2025 but explicitly withheld a reliable removals/encounters table because of potential errors, leaving gaps for anyone trying to reconstruct verified monthly removals [2].
3. What independent analysts have produced and why they differ
Because of the official gaps, researchers have reconstructed monthly series with different methods: Brookings constructed a consistent monthly estimate by using Deportation Data Project monthly removals for January–July where comparable and inferring August–November from ICE detention management reports adjusted to match historical ratios, estimating total removals for 2025 at about 310,000–315,000 [4]. By contrast, the Migration Policy Institute reported roughly 340,000 deportations for FY2025 based on the latest public figures and broader inclusion rules, and media aggregators like The Guardian and TRAC have published rolling totals that produce annual sums near 327,000 depending on cutoffs and whether border-initiated removals and voluntary departures are included [5] [6] [7].
4. Practical answer: “verified” month-by-month? — No single public series; these are the best estimates
A strictly verified, single month‑by‑month ICE removal table for calendar year 2025 cannot be produced from the public records released to date because ICE/Deportation Data Project disclosures contain missing or errored removals tables and DHS/ICE reporting is provided in cumulative or differently structured releases [2] [3]. The best available approach is to use OHSS as the system of record when it posts monthly tables (check the third Thursday releases) and to triangulate with the Deportation Data Project’s processed files and the semi‑monthly ICE reports; doing that yields annual estimates clustered between roughly 310,000 and 340,000 removals with month-by-month tallies dependent on methodological choices [1] [2] [4] [5].
5. How to get closer to a verified monthly series and the hidden agendas to watch for
To obtain the most defensible month-by-month counts, request the OHSS monthly tables directly (they are the DHS operational system of record) and compare those to the Deportation Data Project processed extracts while watching for ICE’s acknowledged data corrections and missing removal tables; be aware that advocacy groups and media outlets often publish reconstructions that reflect implicit agendas—some emphasize higher totals to document a “mass deportation” campaign while others focus on methodology limits to temper claims—so transparency about inclusion rules (voluntary departures, CBP-initiated removals, fiscal vs. calendar year) is essential [1] [2] [5].