Marc Rosenblum, the Department of Homeland Security's top statistician for over a decade, resigned in frustration in late July. Three years ago, he established the Office of Homeland Security Statistics, with bipartisan support, to provide Congress and the public with reliable, timely immigration enforcement data free from political interference. When President Trump returned, that effort was, shall we say, doomed.
During the past year and a half, as the White House directed DHS to run the largest deportation campaign in history, Trump officials blocked Rosenblum's team from publishing monthly reports. The office's website went stale, and its immigration-enforcement tables froze in 2024, as if nothing has happened since - which, if you're the administration, might be the point. In a LinkedIn post, Rosenblum said he was glad to quit an administration whose values he didn't share but sad to leave his team operating in a 'hostile work environment.'
It's hard to think of another issue that plays such a central role in national politics while having basic metrics so poorly understood and easily twisted. Both parties have spun or delayed data when numbers weren't favorable, but the Trump administration has taken distortion to extremes. Over the past several months, 'border czar' Tom Homan and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin have pledged greater transparency, yet the crackdown continues in a fog of fake numbers and statistical subterfuge.
Arrests and deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are the most crucial data categories. With DHS's data office muzzled, the only public source is the ICE website, which sometimes goes months without updates. ICE statistics show about 400,000 deportations during Trump's first year - well short of the White House's goal of 1 million annual removals. Officials, starting with Kristi Noem, glossed over this by claiming far more immigrants left voluntarily, counting estimates as 'self-deportations' as if they were confirmed departures rather than rough guesses.
When asked why Rosenblum's team was blocked, DHS's press office sent an unsigned statement with oddly formatted sentences: 'This is the most transparent administration in American history.' It claimed that 'more than 3 million illegal aliens have left the U.S. because of the Trump administration's crackdown... including an estimated 2.2 million self-deportations.'
Even MAGA hard-liners aren't buying it. They accuse the administration of backing off the mass-deportation pledge, swayed by pro-business Republicans worried about labor shortages and strategists warning about midterms. Critics - including Steve Bannon, Tomi Lahren, and Laura Loomer - have blamed Mullin, who took over in March. Mullin insists ICE enforcement is the most intense ever, citing 4,200 daily arrests during the first week of August, but DHS hasn't published backing data, and the most recent ICE figures show daily arrests less than half that in July. The discrepancy is typical: data surfaces in social-media posts or leaks to right-wing outlets, not in the systematic, apples-to-apples way Rosenblum's office was designed to deliver.
The fundamental problem echoes U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro's awkward task of telling the president the Reflecting Pool damage was likely a botched installation, not vandals. The White House's benchmark - 1 million deportations a year - works better rhetorically than realistically. ICE's previous record was 432,238 in 2013. The gap between expectations and reality endangers any DHS official who acknowledges shortfalls. No one wants to tell the president his deportation claims have no clothes.
Trump's return was paved by embellished data. Border crossings hit an all-time high under Biden, but officials repeatedly claim, without evidence, that 20 to 30 million immigrants arrived during his term. Last year, DHS published an image of a beach captioned 'America After 100 Million Deportations' - a figure requiring fantasizing about removing tens of millions of citizens. Former Border Patrol 'commander at large' Gregory Bovino, a MAGA hero, said he wanted to deport 100 million people, roughly 30 percent of the U.S. population.
The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute estimates unauthorized immigrants rose from 10.8 million in 2019 to 15.8 million in 2024; Pew Research Center agrees. White House officials like Stephen Miller depict Trump's crackdown as an urgent remedy, but the administration has added to the potential deportee pool by stripping legal status from over 1.5 million immigrants with Temporary Protected Status or other provisional permission. The number rendered illegal over 18 months has outpaced actual deportations.
I spoke to opponents and frustrated Republican supporters. 'I don't care what the data says. Just give it to me,' said Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge at the Center for Immigration Studies, which backs Trump's agenda. He wants reliable counts of ICE arrests, detentions, and deportations to move beyond 'partisan chatter.'
The ICE website went dark from April until July, during which arrests lagged behind Noem-era levels. The administration blamed Democrats and the shutdown, but DHS officials told me staff could have continued updating. When the site resumed, numbers were up again.
Mike Howell of the Heritage Foundation, who worked in DHS's legal office during Trump's first term, sued last month to force data release. His Oversight Project and Mass Deportation Coalition press for transparency. 'The Trump administration's deportation numbers should be released with the same transparency, regularity, meaningful metrics, and fanfare as other government numbers, like the jobs report,' Howell wrote. He wants to see employer targeting and farm/factory sweeps, not individual stops. 'It's the mass-deportation coalition's view that people aren't going to leave unless the deportation numbers are much, much larger,' he said. He suspects the administration exaggerates data to look tough, preparing for a post-midterms deal with Democrats that would provide legal status - the 'amnesty' scenario he abhors.
During Trump's first term, DHS delayed monthly data releases until they could be spun favorably. Biden's administration initially did the same, but pressure from both parties led to more sharing. The latest appropriations bill includes oversight provisions requiring more data publication, but compliance remains spotty.
The Office of Homeland Security Statistics was set up outside typical political review for a reason, said Blas Nuñez-Neto, Biden's top border-policy official who helped start it and was Rosenblum's supervisor. 'With all of these independent statistical units... what makes them special is that they're supposedly not reporting to political appointees; they're just producing raw data.' He acknowledged immigration data measure an administration's own performance, so 'there was always a bit of tension.'
In Biden's final year, lawmakers funded Rosenblum's office beyond its request. His team produced user-friendly tables for public comparison. Their last data set was published January 16, 2025 - four days before Trump returned.
Rosenblum declined to interview but wrote in his LinkedIn post it was 'an honor to serve the public by improving DHS data quality and supporting evidence-based policymaking,' adding a parting shot: 'Between the war on immigrants, the war on feds, and the war on facts (not to mention the crazy war in Iran and the brazen corruption)...'