October 26, 2025
Immigration and Customs Enforcement or what you probably know it as – ICE. There is no doubt that under President Trump we are hearing and seeing a lot more of ICE on the streets of America. But what is this agency? Have we ever seen enforcement efforts like this before? And how have other presidents used ice in the past?
Ok – so first – what is ICE and where did it come from.
Today what we know as ICE falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security. But fun fact – that government department didn’t even exist 25 years ago. It’s relatively new. It all started with the September 11th attacks. See – before 9/11 agencies that were supposed to be protecting the homeland and handling things like customs, immigration and intelligence were all scattered throughout multiple government departments like Treasury, Labor and Justice. There was no central hub. Well – after 9/11 it was clear that we needed a new system to prevent another attack. So Congress passed the Homeland Security Act of 2002. And by 2003 the Department of Homeland Security opened its doors. At the time it was the largest federal reorganization since World War II. DHA absorbed almost two dozen existing agencies and created multiple new agencies. One was called the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It’s now known as ICE.
So let’s talk about ICE’s operation. Prior to President Trump’s second term – ICE had more than 20,000 law enforcement and support personnel in more than 400 offices both in the United States and around the world. ICE’s annual budget according to its own website was about $8 billion a year. Now – here’s the thing about ICE – they’re really good about statistics. They keep numbers on all kinds of things. They record how many people they detain, where those people are coming from, whether they are an adult or a child, what authority ice agents use to arrest or detain them and ice even records the number of encounters they have with migrants. The reality is — there are so many numbers. You can look at them a bunch of different ways and politicians like to cherry pick the best ones that make them look the toughest. So in this video I want to be consistent – I’m going to talk about one statistics among several presidents so you can see it across the board. And that statistic is removals. That means you were legally removed from this country. Not detained, not encountered – removed. For the record — deported is not the same as removed. When it comes to ice statistics – deported is an older term which means a certain type of removal…but the more modern, legal term of removal includes deportation and denying someone entry at the border. That information is going to become important at the end of this video.
So – to get the most consistent official number – in this video I’m going with removals. Ok? So let’s take a look… the most recent annual report is for fiscal year 2024 – so the last full year of President Biden’s term. In that report ice said it had removed the largest number of people in the United States illegally in a decade. More than 271,000 non-citizens were kicked out because they had pending criminal charges or convictions, or because they were known gang members or because they were suspected terrorists. The report said that was the highest number since 2014.
(ICE) removed 271,484 noncitizens
- 88,763 had charges or convictions for criminal activity;
- 3,706 were known or suspected gang members;
- 237 were known or suspected terrorists; and eight were human rights violators
2014? That’s strange. You’d think prior to 2024 the highest migrant removal number would be under President Trump’s first term. Nope. According to ICE — the highest number of removals from the United States happened under President Obama.
According to ICE’s end of year reports from 2008 to 2016 Obama was removing massive amounts of people. His peak was in 2012 when he removed almost 410,000 people. When you read his removal priority documents from back then they read a lot like President Trump’s – with one big difference. Obama’s ICE policy was to focus on “identification and removal of those that have broken criminal laws, threats to national security, recent border crossers and repeat violators of immigration law.” But unlike Trump, the Obama policy restricted the detention or removal of people in this country illegally who had committed no crime or who had committed petty crimes, misdemeanors or traffic violations.
When President Trump came into office the first time in 2016 – he changed ICE’s priorities and embraced a “zero-tolerance” policy. Instead of preventing ice from detaining and removing migrants here illegally who also were charged with petty crimes or traffic violations – Trump – back then – like now – said that being in the country illegally was enough of a crime to get you removed. Here are President Trump’s removal numbers from 2016 through 2020. For context – here are President Biden’s removal numbers.
But everything changed again when President Trump took office again in January of this year. Of course you know he campaigned again on closing the border and deporting the “worst of the worst” who were in this country illegally. But now – what we’re actually seeing is his ICE priorities have shifted to not just deporting the worst of the worst – but deporting anyone in this country illegally. Even if they have no criminal record at all. But here’s the thing — $8-$9 billion– which has been the average ICE budget — isn’t enough to do that. So – this year — the Republican led Congress through the Big Beautiful Bill and regular appropriations — really ballooned ICE’s budget. In fiscal year 2025 ICE’s budget is sitting at $28.7 billion. The majority of that funding is being used to detain migrants, but it’s also being used to build new ice detention facilities, continue trump’s border wall construction, purchase new technology and hire thousands of new ice agents with signing bonuses up to $50,000.
Now we have not yet seen ICE’s annual report for 2025 – so I can’t tell you what the number of removals is right now — but I can tell you what the Trump administration said about deportations just last month. According to the Trump administration –since President Trump took office in January 2 million illegal migrants have either been deported by ICE or have self-deported. DHS says say 1.6 million voluntarily self-deported – which I’m not sure how they’re getting that number – and DHS has deported 400,000.
And lastly, ICE – in this modern political climate has become a direct reflection of how the president views immigration. George W. Bush believed – like President Reagan – that immigration was a balance between national security and compassion for a group of people Bush called “hard working and decent people” who were looking for a better life. President Obama, sure, had the most removals of all presidents so far — but he too believed in that humanity piece. It was Obama who created the DACA program which to this day, protects certain migrant children who were brought to this country illegally by their parents from being deported. President Biden’s policy was similar. And we all know about president Trump’s hard line stance on immigration. Which breaks from all of those other presidents. That hard line stance has resulted in ICE agents being given the green like to be more visible in the streets with raids and public arrests at workplaces and in neighborhoods. The Trump administration has also allowed ICE agents to wear masks – which they never did before unless they were undercover. Homeland Security says the masks are necessary now because of the modern day doxing that these ice agents are the victims of.
Read the latest deportation numbers from Trump here.
Read the Trump detention numbers here.
Read the most recent ICE annual report from 2024 here.
Read the Obama ICE removal numbers (2016) here.
Read Obama ICE key priorities (2012) here.
Look at the ALL ICE statistics here.
History of ICE here.
