When a number is big enough, it can stop feeling real. One-point-six million. That’s the figure ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons dropped before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee this past Thursday, and it landed in the chamber with the kind of quiet weight that numbers of that size tend to carry. These are people who have already had their day — or many days — in immigration court. A judge has ruled. A removal order exists. And yet, here they are. Still in the United States.
The February 13, 2026 hearing wasn’t just a routine oversight session. It came at one of the most turbulent moments in recent immigration enforcement history, with federal agents under intense national scrutiny after the shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens — Renée Good and Alex Pretti — during an ICE operation in Minneapolis last month. The combination of a massive enforcement push, civilian casualties, and a Senate chamber full of senators who wanted answers made for a hearing that was equal parts informational and political theater.
The Numbers, Explained
Let’s start with what Lyons actually said, because the details matter. The 1.6 million figure refers specifically to individuals who have received a final order of removal from an immigration judge within the Department of Justice system. Lyons was careful to clarify this: these aren’t deportation orders issued directly by ICE or the Department of Homeland Security. They come from immigration courts — a distinction that matters both legally and in terms of what it tells us about how the system works, or in many cases, doesn’t.
“What we’re tracking right now is about 1.6 million final orders in the United States, with approximately 800,000 of those having criminal convictions.”— Todd Lyons, ICE Acting Director, February 12, 2026
Of that 1.6 million, roughly half — about 800,000 people — have criminal convictions on their records. That’s the stat that drew the most attention in the chamber, and honestly, it deserved it. But the flip side is equally significant: the other 800,000 do not have criminal convictions. They are people who entered the country illegally, overstayed a visa, or had their asylum or immigration claims denied. They lost their legal battle in court, received a removal order, and remained.
Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, a Republican, was the one who pushed Lyons to put a number on the scale of people with final removal orders. Lankford had been pressing on what percentage of people in removal processes already had a final order issued. Lyons admitted he didn’t have the percentage off the top of his head, but he did have the raw figures ready — and 1.6 million is a figure that speaks for itself.
Key Figures From the Hearing
- ICE tracked 1.6 million individuals with final deportation orders as of February 2026
- Approximately 800,000 of those carry criminal charges or convictions
- Minnesota alone has 16,840 individuals with final deportation orders currently at large
- ICE conducted 37 internal use-of-force investigations over the past year; 18 closed, 19 pending
- Less than 14% of the ~400,000 people arrested by ICE in Trump’s first year back involved violent criminal offenses
- About 60% of all ICE arrests over the past year involved some form of criminal charge or conviction — most non-violent
The Minneapolis Pressure Cooker
You can’t understand what this hearing was really about without understanding what happened in Minneapolis. Operation Metro Surge — the Trump administration’s large-scale immigration enforcement push in Minnesota — had, by the time of the hearing, become a flashpoint in the national debate over how immigration enforcement should be conducted. Two U.S. citizens were shot and killed by federal agents during operations. Their deaths, both still under investigation, cast a shadow over the entire testimony.
Lyons and U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott were peppered with questions about the Minneapolis shootings. Both men declined to offer detailed accounts of what happened, citing ongoing investigations. That answer clearly frustrated senators on both sides of the aisle, but it’s also the standard legal response when active probes are underway — offering specifics could compromise investigations and create liability exposure.
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who chaired the hearing as head of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, pressed Scott directly on whether body camera footage from agents involved in Alex Pretti’s shooting would be released. Scott committed to it: “There’s body cam video that’s all being looked at. And until all that evidence is evaluated, I can’t jump to a conclusion in either direction. I would ask America to do the same thing.” When Paul pushed further, Scott said simply, “Yes” — the footage will be released.
“What has resulted is not controlled, target-focused enforcement, but an operation lacking planning, discipline and constitutional restraint.”— Paul Schnell, Minnesota Dept. of Corrections Commissioner
The Senate panel also heard from a group of Minnesota officials who offered starkly different perspectives. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat, called for sweeping oversight reforms and demanded a full accounting of every individual detained or deported from Minnesota during the surge. On the other end, Republican state Representative Harry Niska expressed appreciation for federal enforcement efforts, saying the operation had become “more focused and disciplined” in its final days.
Operation Metro Surge Winds Down
By the time Thursday’s hearing concluded, White House border czar Tom Homan had already announced that Operation Metro Surge was drawing to a close. At a press conference, Homan said a significant reduction of personnel was already underway. “As a result of our efforts here, Minnesota is now less of a sanctuary state for criminals,” Homan said, signaling that the administration viewed the operation as a success despite its controversies.
The drawdown followed weeks of protests and intense public criticism, particularly after the deaths of Good and Pretti. Whether you view the operation’s conclusion as a capitulation to public pressure or a natural operational endpoint depends largely on where you stand politically — but the facts are that it ran, it generated significant controversy, and it’s now winding down with its outcomes still being litigated in both the courts and the court of public opinion.
What the Arrest Data Actually Shows
One of the more nuanced data points to emerge from the week’s hearings came from an internal DHS document obtained by CBS News. According to that report, less than 14 percent of the roughly 400,000 people arrested by ICE during the first year of Trump’s second term were arrested for violent criminal offenses specifically. At the same time, about 60 percent of all ICE arrests involved people with some form of criminal charge or conviction — most of them non-violent.
This is where the political debate gets complicated. ICE and administration officials point to the 60 percent figure to argue that their enforcement is, in fact, targeting people with criminal backgrounds. Critics counter with the 14 percent figure, arguing that the vast majority of arrests involve non-violent offenses or civil immigration violations that don’t represent the “worst of the worst” framing the administration often uses. Both things can be true simultaneously, and in this case, they are.
The Oversight Picture — and Where It Falls Short
Perhaps one of the less-reported but genuinely important revelations from the hearing: ICE conducted 37 internal investigations into officers’ use of force over the past year. Of those, 18 were closed, 19 remain pending, and at least one was referred for further action — a detail Lyons offered without elaborating on what “further action” meant. For context, ICE employs roughly 20,000 officers and agents nationwide. Whether 37 use-of-force investigations represents a lot or a little depends heavily on operational scope and how those figures compare to prior years — information the committee didn’t fully unpack.
Minnesota’s Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell perhaps put it most plainly: “It is both possible to respect civil liberties and engage in meaningful immigration enforcement. We as a country need DHS to respect that balance.” He pushed back on characterizations that Minnesota had been uncooperative with federal authorities, calling such claims “baseless,” while also saying the Minneapolis surge had “tragic consequences” and was “lacking planning, discipline and constitutional restraint.”
The 1.6 Million and What Comes Next
Here’s the thing about 1.6 million deportation orders: they don’t enforce themselves. ICE has finite resources, detention capacity, and personnel. Even at its most aggressive, the agency has never come close to removing everyone with a final order in a single year. The question of how to prioritize within that pool — violent criminals first, recent border crossers next, long-settled families somewhere further down the list — has driven U.S. immigration policy debates for decades, and it’s clearly no closer to resolution in 2026 than it was before.
What Thursday’s hearing did accomplish was put some actual numbers on a debate that has often been conducted in generalities. Now everyone in the room — and everyone watching — knows the scale of the backlog. They know roughly how many of those 1.6 million have criminal histories. They know how many are in Minnesota. What they still don’t know, and what Congress has yet to seriously address, is what a realistic, lawful, and humane plan to actually manage that backlog looks like.
That’s not a question Lyons could answer from his Senate chair. It’s one that requires legislation, funding, and the kind of bipartisan political will that hasn’t existed on immigration for a long time. The hearing was, in the end, a reminder of how much we know about the problem, and how little agreement there is on what to do about it.
