What public datasets does DHS publish that break out formal removals versus voluntary departures by month in 2025?

1. The OHSS monthly tables — the intended single-source monthly breakout

DHS’s OHSS publishes an explicit set of monthly immigration-enforcement tables labeled “Immigration Enforcement and Legal Processes Monthly Tables” that include monthly counts of removals and returns (which the agency distinguishes in table notes) and identifies the OHSS Persist Dataset as the system of record used to construct those tables with monthly updates (released on the third Thursday) as of January 2025 ^{[1] [2]}.

2. OFO Repatriations/Returns — where voluntary departures show up for inadmissible encounters

U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Field Operations (OFO) maintains DHS “Repatriations/Returns” material that defines and tracks returns such as voluntary departures, voluntary returns, withdrawals, and Title 42 expulsions; these OFO datasets and definitions explicitly treat voluntary departure/return as a subset of returns rather than an order of removal, and thus are a primary public source for monthly “voluntary” movements at ports of entry and some border encounters ^[3].

3. ICE ERO removals datasets — formal removal counts and hybrid inclusions

ICE’s ERO publishes Arrests/Removals/Detention statistics as public-use tables and datasets that report removals by month and by categories such as citizenship and criminality, and ICE’s removals files have, at times, included returns or voluntary returns in their accounting depending on the methodology used for the release ^{[4] [5]}.

4. Methodology shifts, retroactive reclassifications and missing months — the caveat that shapes any 2025 analysis

Independent analysts and projects documenting DHS releases warn that DHS changed counting rules in mid-2023 and that ICE’s 2025 removals datasets released intermittently were sometimes incomplete or retroactively reclassified (for example, removals methodology applied retroactively and March 2025 files were judged incomplete by the Deportation Data Project), meaning month-to-month tallies for “formal removals” versus “voluntary departures/returns” may differ across OHSS, OFO, and ICE files unless the user reconciles sourcing notes and data revisions ^{[5] [6] [7]}.

5. Practical guidance: which file to use depending on the question

For a direct month-by-month public DHS source that attempts to separate formal removals and returns/voluntary departures, start with the OHSS “Immigration Enforcement and Legal Processes Monthly Tables” (Persist Dataset tables) and cross-check OFO Repatriations pages for port and inadmissible encounter returns; use ICE ERO removals tables for interior formal removal tallies but always consult the corresponding methodology and release notes because ICE’s removals files in 2025 had documented gaps and methodology changes that can inflate or deflate counts depending on whether voluntary returns were folded in ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]}.

6. Competing narratives and institutional incentives to watch

DHS components and outside advocates emphasize different figures for policy narratives: DHS/OHSS aims to present comprehensive operational reporting (but may consolidate “returns” and “removals” differently across component tables), OFO highlights inadmissible returns and voluntary departures to show expedited processing, and ICE’s ERO data feeds enforcement narratives—each actor has an incentive to frame monthly totals to support policy claims or resource allocation, so analysts must triangulate across OHSS, OFO, and ICE source notes rather than rely on a single table ^{[1] [3] [4] [5]}.

7. What this reporting does not settle

Available public sources document where DHS publishes monthly breakouts and signal definitional ambiguity and incompleteness, but the provided reporting does not permit an independent verification of whether every monthly 2025 DHS release consistently and cleanly separated “formal removals” from “voluntary departures” across all agencies without gaps — reconciling those differences requires downloading the OHSS monthly tables, OFO repatriation files, and ICE ERO removals files and reading the release/methodology notes for each month ^{[1] [3] [4] [5]}.