The Trump administration has stopped updating or removed key datasets used to track immigration enforcement, leaving researchers, lawyers and journalists with fewer figures they previously relied on to assess policy changes, according to an Associated Press review.
The Office of Homeland Security Statistics, which has tracked immigration data in some form since 1872 and has published monthly reports since being reorganized under the Biden administration, has not updated key enforcement metrics on its website since early last year. A note on the page where the monthly reports were posted said the reports were “delayed while it is under review.”
The latest monthly reports listed on the office’s site are from January 2025, and its annual report—typically released in December—had not been published as of mid-March. AP reported that researchers said the missing data made it harder to study the effects of different policies, cite figures in litigation, and track trends that can be used to hold the government to account.
Advocates and researchers have pointed to the loss of data even as the administration promotes enforcement goals with numbers. The AP review described the administration’s deportation plan as including targets such as deporting 1 million people and other enforcement aims, while also saying the administration has released less reliable, carefully vetted information than predecessors on the policy that has become one of the most contentious of Trump’s second term.
Mike Howell, who heads the conservative Oversight Project, criticized the approach, saying, “They aren’t publishing the data.” He added that the Department of Homeland Security has put out numbers in news releases “that purport to be statistics with no statistical backup and the numbers have jumped all over the place.”
Austin Kocher, a research professor at Syracuse University who follows immigration data trends, said the monthly reports were among the most useful, calling them “the most timely data” and “the most reliable data.” Kocher also said the reports have “the most omniscient view of immigration enforcement across the entire agency.”
The AP review also described how other parts of the broader immigration data picture have been moving more slowly. It said other agencies continue releasing some immigration-related numbers—such as U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics on border encounters and Department of Justice immigration court data—but experts said key enforcement-related data has slowed. It also reported that the State Department’s most recent visa issuance data was from August and that key statistics from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had not been updated since October.
For immigration enforcement records that do continue to exist, experts said the data can be difficult to access or verify at the pace researchers want. The AP review said an ICE detention dataset required by Congress is generally released every two weeks, but delays and overwriting across releases can complicate efforts to analyze trends.
AP also pointed to the way inconsistent federal numbers have complicated scrutiny of enforcement claims. It reported that in a Jan. 20 news release, DHS said it had deported more than 675,000 people since Trump returned to the White House. A day later, DHS issued a second release putting the figure at 622,000, and in congressional testimony March 4, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the figure was 700,000. AP reported that an analysis of ICE figures put the number of removals at roughly 400,000 over Trump’s first year.
Researchers have sought other ways to fill the gap. AP reported that the University of California, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project sued under the Freedom of Information Act to access ICE arrest data, including nationalities, conviction status, and whether arrests occurred at jails or in the community. Graeme Blair, the project’s co-director, said, “Given the scale of what they were talking about doing, it seemed really important to be able to understand, to be able to double check those numbers.” He said the data obtained through the lawsuit runs through Oct. 15 and does not cover recent operations, including a Minneapolis enforcement surge in which federal immigration officers fatally shot two protesters, leading to widespread demonstrations and scrutiny.
The absence of transparent, timely data has drawn bipartisan criticism, AP reported, with advocates arguing the lack of reliable figures limits the public’s ability to understand what enforcement actions are being taken. Howell said, “We deserve to know the numbers, just like we deserve to know who’s in our country and who needs to leave.”
DHS did not respond to detailed questions about why it was no longer releasing specific data, AP reported. In a statement, DHS said, “This is the most transparent Administration in history, we release new data multiple times a week and upon reporter request.”