Days after a blowout election loss due in part to its vicious and unpopular immigration crackdown, the Trump administration bragged Thursday that it had deported a record number of people in the most recent fiscal year.

The Department of Homeland Security announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement carried out 491,000 immigration-related arrests and 483,000 deportations between Oct. 1, 2025 and Sept. 30, 2026, numbers the agency claimed were “record shattering.”

The figures marked an increase of roughly 40,000 deportations over the previous fiscal year, and a sizable jump over both Trump’s first presidency and Joe Biden’s.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a glowing statement that he “couldn’t be prouder” of ICE officers.

“Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, ICE has been unleashed to target and remove illegal aliens so that we can save American lives,” he said.

Administration officials have claimed over and over that they are targeting the “worst of the worst” with their enforcement efforts, but many analyses have shown they are predominantly detaining people with no criminal records. That includes immigrants seeking asylum and those with temporary legal status.

Only a small share have convictions for violent offenses, though those tend to be the cases the administration highlights. In its Thursday press release, DHS included photos of what it called “the worst illegal aliens” detained during the year.

Voters who cast their ballots in the GOP bloodbath last week were not as excited as Mullin about the crackdown, which has included multiple fatal shootings by immigration agents. Exit polling from CBS News found that 58% felt Trump’s immigration agenda had “gone too far,” while a minority felt it was either appropriate or had not gone far enough.

White House then-Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller attends a Halloween event hosted by first lady Melania Trump at the White House on Oct. 29, 2026 in Washington, D.C. The President and first lady welcomed families to the annual trick-or-treat celebration on the White House grounds.

Finn Gomez via Getty Images

Although inflation and the cost of living were voters’ top issues, the unpopularity of the president’s deportation campaign appears to have significantly dented the party’s standing with Latino voters, who swung left compared to 2024 and carried Democrats to their historic election sweep in Texas.

Trump acknowledged in the wake of the midterms that his immigration crackdown had been “too tough” and probably hurt his party. He said he might be open to a deal in which long-term undocumented immigrants without criminal records would be allowed to stay in the country.

“When you go into a hotel and you say, ‘Let me see your pass,’ and you have a woman that’s worked there as a maid, as a cleaner…and all of a sudden, they’re being taken outta the country, it’s tough,” Trump told 60 Minutes. “It’s a tough thing.”

But at the same time, it’s not clear Trump has been chastened at all by the election results. When Susie Wiles departed late last week, Trump promoted Stephen Miller, the architect of his immigration agenda, to take over as his chief of staff.

Democrats said the appointment showed Trump was “doubling down” on his broadly unpopular deportation campaign.

“Stephen Miller is the architect of the unconstitutional ICE raids that have terrorized our communities and kidnapped and killed American citizens and immigrant families,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), who’s likely to be chair of the House Oversight Committee come January.