Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin just hit his 100-day mark running the department, and he sat down for an interview to lay out a number that should settle a few arguments: 2026 deportation figures are on pace to blow past everything DHS managed in all of 2025.
In fact, Mullin says they'll probably pass last year's total within the next six weeks.
"We're on a path this year — '26 — to well past what we did in '25," Mullin revealed.
The numbers underneath that headline are worth your time. Seventy percent of individuals arrested by DHS under Mullin's watch had pending or prior felony charges. Not traffic tickets. Not paperwork issues. Felonies. As Mullin put it, "we're looking at the worst of the worst," and when agents pick someone up, "usually there's three to four other occupants" who also turn out to be deportable. One raid leads to four removals.
The got-away numbers at the southern border — those are the people who cross without being caught — have dropped to single digits. Under the previous administration, those figures weren't even tracked with a straight face. Meanwhile, the northern border with Canada, all 5,400 miles of it, is getting real attention. Mullin cited Iranian nationals being apprehended at a rate of about four per week coming through the northern corridor.
And about terrorists: under President Trump's second term, DHS has arrested just over 1,900. That's not a typo. Nineteen hundred people on terror watchlists, apprehended inside the United States or at its borders.
The wall — the actual, physical barrier — is getting finished. "From the Pacific to the Gulf of America this time next year... we will have the primary wall complete," Mullin said. Secondary wall sections, spaced 60 to 150 feet behind the primary barrier, are also going up.
Then there's the children. When the Trump administration took office, 450,000 children who had crossed the border were unaccounted for. Mullin's team has located 147,000 so far. "We're still looking for 300,000 children," he said. That's 300,000 kids the prior administration lost track of and never went looking for.
Mullin replaced former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who was reassigned to handle Latin American affairs. He took over the department's 22 components — including ICE, CBP, HSI, and the 287(g) enforcement program — and immediately set about making the machinery work faster.
Critics will point out that enforcement actions always look aggressive in their early months. Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut has been among the loudest voices pushing back on DHS operations. The data, though, doesn't support the idea that this is a sugar rush. The trajectory Mullin described isn't front-loaded — it's accelerating. The six-week timeline to surpass 2025's full-year total suggests the pace is picking up, not leveling off.
"We've released no one into this country that we've apprehended," Mullin said. Zero catch-and-release. That policy alone represents a structural reversal from the previous four years, when apprehension often meant a court date and a bus ticket.
Mullin also referenced the human cost of the old approach: 41 deaths attributed to illegal aliens in Tennessee over a 12-month period, and roughly 50 percent of deaths in Fairfax County, Virginia linked to the same population. Those aren't abstract statistics. Those are coroners' reports.
"I don't think I've slept in 100 days," Mullin said. "I still love it. I think I'm still the luckiest man in the world."
A hundred days of not sleeping, and the deportation numbers are up, the got-aways are in single digits, and 147,000 missing children have been found. Whatever the previous team was doing for four years, it apparently required a lot more rest.