Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 49,571 people in the United States in July 2026. That is one arrest every fifty-four seconds, for a month. Al Jazeera English has set the figure beside a second one: more than 476,000 removal orders issued between October 2025 and June 2026. Both numbers come from the government’s own data.
The recording
Published by Al Jazeera English on its own channel, under the title How do you arrest 50,000 people quietly?, produced by AJLabs. The figures shown on screen are credited to the Deportation Data Project and to the Executive Office for Immigration Review.
Checked 12 September 2026Watch on Al Jazeera English’s channel
Where the arrest figure comes from
The 49,571 figure is not an estimate. It comes from Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s own records, released to the Deportation Data Project, a research effort run out of the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, Los Angeles, and analysed by The Associated Press. Al Jazeera reported it on 26 August 2026.
The shape of the increase matters more than the single month. Monthly arrests stood at roughly 8,000 in December 2024. By July 2026 they were above 49,000. July was fifteen per cent above June and about seventy per cent above February. Nearly 20,000 of the arrests were made in Texas and Florida. The agency added some 12,000 officers and agents over the preceding year.
Where the removal-order figure comes from
The second number, more than 476,000 removal orders between October 2025 and June 2026, is credited on screen to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the body that runs the immigration courts. The Coalition has not been able to verify that figure against a published release from that office, and records it here as Al Jazeera reports it, attributed to Al Jazeera. Investigating.
Why the Coalition carries this
A removal order is the instrument that starts everything this site documents. It is what precedes a transfer. When the number of orders issued in nine months approaches half a million, the question of where people are sent stops being an individual question and becomes a structural one. The states on this site’s Refouling States list, and the transit and temporary recipients listed alongside them, are the downstream end of that volume.
The Coalition relies on the arrest figure, which is traceable to government records through a named research project and a named news agency. It does not yet rely on the removal-order figure.
Sources
Al Jazeera English, How do you arrest 50,000 people quietly?, By the Numbers, August 2026.
Al Jazeera, US immigration agents arrested more than 49,500 people in July, 26 August 2026.
The Deportation Data Project, which publishes the underlying records.