The Department of Homeland Security's top statistician resigned in late July, saying he was leaving behind a "hostile work environment" under the Trump administration.
Marc Rosenblum, who spent more than a decade in that role, had established DHS's Office of Homeland Security Statistics three years ago with bipartisan support, aiming to give Congress and the public reliable, politically independent data on immigration enforcement, but The Atlantic reported that independence didn't survive Trump's return to office.
Over the past year and a half, as DHS pursued the largest deportation campaign in U.S. history, officials blocked Rosenblum's team from publishing its monthly reports, and the office's immigration-enforcement tables have remained frozen since 2024, leaving ICE's own website — which has sometimes gone months without updates — as the only public data source.
That data shows ICE deported roughly 400,000 people during Trump's first year back in office, far short of the administration's goal of 1 million annual removals. Officials have papered over the gap by counting so-called "self-deportations" — unverified estimates of people who left voluntarily — alongside confirmed removals.
"This is the most transparent administration in American history," a DHS spokesperson said, and claimed more than 3 million people had left the country, including an estimated 2.2 million self-deportations, though that official did not explain why Rosenblum's office had been blocked from publishing.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has claimed ICE averaged 4,200 daily arrests in early August, but the department hasn't published data supporting that figure, and the most recent ICE numbers show July arrests running at less than half that rate.
Even immigration hard-liners aren't convinced by the administration's numbers – MAGA influencers such as Steve Bannon, Tomi Lahren and Laura Loomer have accused Mullin of quietly softening the deportation push under pressure from business interests and midterm-minded political strategists.
Mike Howell, a Heritage Foundation fellow who leads the Mass Deportation Coalition, sued the administration last month to force release of more ICE data, arguing enforcement numbers deserve the same "transparency, regularity ... and fanfare" as the monthly jobs report. Howell said he suspects the administration inflates its numbers to appear tough while quietly preparing for a post-midterm deal offering legal status to some unauthorized immigrants.
Rosenblum's former supervisor, ex-DHS border official Blas Nuñez-Neto, said independent statistical offices like the one Rosenblum built are valuable precisely because they aren't supposed to answer to political appointees.
Rosenblum, who declined an interview request, took a parting shot at the administration in a LinkedIn post announcing his resignation.
"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)," he posted, "I just need a change."
