Trump border czar Tom Homan announced that the administration is preparing an even larger immigration crackdown in 2027, telling supporters that this year’s record-setting enforcement is only the beginning.
“Mass deportation is happening,” Homan said Thursday at an America First Policy Institute conference held at Trump National Doral Miami, according to reporting by Local 10 News and the Latin Times.
He then issued a direct warning: “Wait until you see what we do next year.” The administration, he added, is “removing and arresting more people right now than we ever have in the history of this nation.”
The promise of a bigger 2027 sets a marker for a campaign that has already broken its own records repeatedly through 2026 — and it lands just weeks before a midterm election that could determine how much room the administration has to deliver on it.
Records set, and a claim in dispute
Department of Homeland Security figures show interior arrests rising month after month over the summer: 43,900 in June, 50,208 in July and 50,925 in August, each a new monthly high, as reported by NBC News and others. Homan suggested September could stand as the single highest month for deportations in ICE’s 23-year history.
Some of his numbers, however, remain unverified or contested. His claim of “nearly 200,000” interior arrests over four months comes from his own remarks and a television interview, and has not been confirmed by any published ICE dataset. And his repeated description of those arrested as mostly criminals runs against independent tracking: the Deportation Data Project found that more than half of the people ICE arrested in July had no criminal conviction or pending charge, a pattern echoed by multiple analyses of this year’s operations. The distance between the administration’s framing and the available data has become the central dispute over the campaign.
The human cost inside the system has also grown. Fiscal year 2026 was the deadliest on record in ICE custody, with 37 people dying in detention, up from 23 the year before. And in cases where a person’s home government has refused to accept their return, deportees have in some instances been redirected to third countries, including Liberia and Equatorial Guinea, according to reporting by WLRN — a practice that has left large numbers of people in prolonged legal limbo.
The midterm stakes
Homan’s forecast of a larger 2027 arrives into an uncertain political landscape. Democrats are casting the November midterm elections as a chance to put the first real check on the administration’s immigration agenda, and control of Congress would give them tools they now lack.
A congressional majority would allow Democrats to open oversight hearings, issue subpoenas, and press for answers on the detention deaths and the enforcement tactics that have drawn scrutiny this year. More concretely, the power of the purse runs through Congress: ICE’s expanded operations depend on funding, and appropriations are where a determined majority could try to attach conditions or slow the buildout the administration is planning for 2027. A majority could also block new immigration legislation the White House wants.
The limits are real, too. Congress cannot by itself order the executive branch to stop making arrests, and the president can veto legislation he opposes, so the practical effect of a Democratic win would more likely be constraint and scrutiny than reversal. Even so, the administration’s own coalition is showing strain on the issue.
Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, a Florida Republican, told Telemundo the same day as Homan’s speech that the administration’s immigration approach “has been excessive,” and Rep. María Elvira Salazar has said in campaign advertising that the policy has gone “too far” — signs of unease within the majority that could matter in close votes.
Homan left Florida having drawn a public line: September 2026 as a landmark month, and 2027 as the year the enforcement machinery scales up further. If September’s figures are confirmed, the administration would be within reach of Barack Obama’s single-year deportation record of about 409,000, which has stood since 2012.
Whether the administration reaches that mark — and whether it can expand further next year — now turns in part on an election. Homan framed 2027 as a certainty. The voters, and the Congress they choose in November, may yet have something to say about it.
Sources: Local 10 News and the Latin Times.
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