FASTER, PLEASE: Byron York: Trump’s most important achievement.

Second, this month, the Department of Homeland Security announced the departure of more than 2.5 million migrants who were in the country illegally. “Since January 20, 2025, DHS enforcement operations have resulted in more than 605,000 deportations,” the department said in a statement. “DHS has prioritized removing the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to return law and order to the United States. Additionally, thanks to the comprehensive efforts of DHS law enforcement, 1.9 million illegal aliens have voluntarily self-deported since January 2025.”

The first number — 605,000 deportations — has astonished some immigration enforcement veterans. In the past, the government’s deportations were in two categories. One was the number of illegal immigrants removed from the interior of the country, and the other was the number who were simply apprehended at the border and turned around back into Mexico. Obviously, the first category requires a lot more work for immigration enforcement.

Former immigration judge Andrew Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors tighter immigration controls, noted that the high-water mark of removals from the interior of the country was 237,941 in 2008-2009. (Arthur attributed that number, at the very end of the George W. Bush administration, to an effort by Bush to increase interior removals, appearing tough on immigration, in hopes of persuading Congress to approve an amnesty deal.) The total number of removals was then “padded,” in Arthur’s words, by the number of illegal border crossers who had been turned around upon arrival at the border and sent back to Mexico.

Now, Trump has virtually stopped the flow of illegal crossers at the border, so the administration’s number of deportations — 605,000 — is virtually all people removed from the interior. That is a huge number; Arthur called it “epic.”

Still though, those are rookie numbers. You’ve got to pump those numbers up.