DHS Gives Congress Four Different Sets of DACA Detention Figures

The Department of Homeland Security has provided at least four numerically inconsistent responses to congressional oversight requests about the detention and removal of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients since January 2025, a pattern that House Democrats say is preventing them from performing core legislative oversight. The discrepancies span a range of more than 300 in the detention figure alone and have drawn formal follow-up demands from members in both chambers.

DACA, established by executive action in 2012, grants temporary forbearance from removal and work authorization to individuals brought to the United States as children who meet specified eligibility criteria. The program was created to protect from deportation children who arrived in the country illegally prior to 2007 and now benefits roughly half a million people. In recent years, federal courts in Texas and Louisiana have declared DACA and the Biden administration's efforts to codify it illegal, but they have allowed current recipients to continue renewing their two-year work permits and deportation deferrals. The program operates under the Secretary of Homeland Security's discretionary authority over enforcement priorities under the Immigration and Nationality Act; DHS itself has stated that DACA "does not confer lawful status" and that protection "can be terminated at any time" at the agency's discretion. [POLITICO]^[2]

The congressional fact-finding effort began in September 2025, when 95 members of Congress wrote to DHS requesting a full accounting of how many active DACA recipients had been detained or deported by DHS since January 2025, including locations, dates, and outcomes of those cases. In the first written response, directed to Reps. Delia Ramirez of Illinois and Sylvia Garcia of Texas and dated Jan. 2 of this year, then-Secretary Kristi Noem reported that 270 DACA recipients had been arrested and 174 DACA applicants had been removed from the United States between Jan. 1, 2025, and Sept. 28, 2025. In a separate letter to Sens. Alex Padilla of California and Dick Durbin of Illinois, dated Feb. 11 and covering a longer window, Noem reported that ICE arrested 261 DACA beneficiaries and deported 86, covering the period from Jan. 1 through Nov. 19, 2025. The two responses cover different date ranges, yet they produce conflicting totals: the nine-month figure exceeds the eleven-month figure by nine arrests and 88 removals. It is unclear how ICE arrested more DACA recipients in a nine-month window when compared to an eleven-month window.

After Ramirez sought clarification from the agency, then-Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons replied in April, attributing the discrepancy in the numbers sent to Ramirez and Garcia to a coding issue and asserting that those figures were accurate. [POLITICO] The most recent figures arrive in a response to a letter led by Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas. In March 2026, Reps. Castro, Garcia, Ramirez, and Raja Krishnamoorthi sent a letter calling out DHS for what they characterized as unlawful and targeted arrests, and in response, ICE disclosed that 85 DACA recipients with no criminal conviction or criminal charge had been removed from the United States since January 2025. That same response reported that 658 DACA recipients and "requestors," a term the administration now uses for applicants, had been detained between Jan. 1 and May 12, 2026, and that 93 DACA recipients or applicants had been arrested under the Laken Riley Act during that window. [POLITICO] The Laken Riley Act, signed into law in January 2025, mandates detention without bail of certain noncitizens arrested or charged with crimes including burglary, theft, larceny, shoplifting, assaulting a police officer, or offenses resulting in death or serious bodily injury. Notably, the law applies even to immigrants authorized to be present in the United States, including those granted DACA or Temporary Protected Status.

DHS did not resolve the numerical inconsistencies when asked to do so by reporters. In a statement, the agency said that "illegal aliens who claim to be recipients of DACA are not automatically protected from deportations," and asserted that 90 percent of DACA recipients arrested by ICE had been charged with or convicted of a crime. [POLITICO] DHS said that 241 of the 261 DACA enrollees taken into ICE custody had "criminal histories" outside of civil immigration violations, a category DHS applies to both pending charges and convictions. The letter signed by Noem did not specify the severity of the alleged criminal records. Senate Democrats challenged that characterization, noting that DACA recipients undergo strict background checks at every renewal cycle, and that the administration has not provided further details about the nature of the charges behind the criminal history claims.

The congressional demands now span multiple letters, multiple chambers, and an extended timeline. Noem provided lawmakers with conflicting figures, telling House members that DHS detained 270 DACA recipients and deported 174, a higher count than the 261 detained and 86 deported the agency reported to the Senate. House members, including Ramirez and Garcia, demanded that DHS provide an accurate and complete accounting no later than March 13, 2026. That deadline passed without a responsive reconciliation of the figures. The wider legal posture remains unsettled: Republican-led states have asked a federal judge in Texas to order the Trump administration to gradually terminate the program, and it is unclear when or how the judge will rule. In April 2026, the Board of Immigration Appeals, a politically appointed panel of judges that interprets immigration law and whose decisions set national precedent for immigration courts, sided with DHS attorneys in a ruling that makes it easier to deport DACA recipients. That decision adds legal weight to the administration's enforcement posture, while the competing figures submitted to Congress leave the actual scope of enforcement without verified measurement.