For years, Americans heard that immigration laws existed but could not really be enforced.
The Trump administration is trying to prove the opposite.
At the 100-day mark of his leadership at the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary Markwayne Mullin said deportation efforts are accelerating so quickly that 2026 removal totals are on track to surpass all of 2025 within weeks.
Speaking in an exclusive interview from DHS headquarters, Mullin described an operation focused less on headlines and more on execution.
“We’re on a path this year — ’26 — to well past what we did in ’25,” Mullin said. “Our numbers are in fact — within, I’d say probably, within the next six weeks we’ll probably pass what we deported in all of ’25.”
He added that if current trends continue, surpassing last year’s total appears increasingly likely in short order.
“What we’re going to do in ’26, maybe two months, I think we’ll definitely do it within two months but should be probably six weeks at the current rate.”
According to Mullin, the strategy is straightforward: prioritize illegal immigrants with criminal records and individuals already under final deportation orders issued by immigration judges.
But enforcement actions often do not stop there.
Mullin said federal agents frequently encounter additional illegal immigrants while carrying out those operations inside residences and other locations. When those individuals are identified as removable under immigration law, they are also taken into custody and processed for removal.
The administration presents this as a return to a basic principle that many voters felt Washington abandoned: immigration laws only mean something if they are enforced after court orders are issued.
That distinction matters politically.
For years, immigration debates often focused almost entirely on border crossings while less attention went to interior enforcement — the question of what happens after people remain in the country unlawfully or after legal proceedings conclude.
The Trump administration has increasingly emphasized both.
The message from DHS appears designed to be clear: if a judge issues a final removal order, the government intends to carry it out. If criminal records are involved, officials say those cases move even faster.
Supporters view the approach as restoring credibility to a system that too often announced consequences without enforcing them.
Mullin’s comments also fit squarely inside the broader America First framework that helped reshape national politics: secure the border, enforce the law, and rebuild public trust by showing that government decisions still carry weight.
Because in the end, a legal system that writes orders but never executes them stops functioning as a system — and starts becoming a suggestion.
