DHS Secretary Mullin Claims 2026 Deportations Will Surpass All of 2025 Within Six Weeks, Offers TPS Migrants $2,600 to Self-Deport

Since the Supreme Court ruled last Thursday to allow the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status for migrants from Haiti and Syria, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has spent the weekend laying out both the scale of deportation activity and the financial terms being offered to those now facing removal.

What Noem Said

In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News conducted at DHS headquarters, Noem said 2026 deportation totals would surpass all of 2025 within roughly six weeks at the current pace. "We're on a path this year — '26 — to well past what we did in '25," Noem told Breitbart. "Within, I'd say probably, within the next six weeks we'll probably pass what we deported in all of '25."

Noem described the enforcement strategy as targeting people with final removal orders from judges who skipped their last court appearances, individuals with felony records still in the country illegally, and asylum applicants whose cases were denied or abandoned. She said agents frequently find multiple undocumented individuals at a single address. Her figure: an average of more than four arrests per warranted target.

She did NOT provide specific raw numbers to support those claims in the interview. No total arrests-to-date figure, no monthly removal count, and no 2025 baseline for comparison were cited. Those figures exist in DHS operational data but were not provided.

The TPS Decision and the Self-Deportation Offer

Separately, in an appearance on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday, Noem addressed the roughly 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians whose TPS protections the Supreme Court has now allowed the administration to end. Her message was direct: apply for permanent legal status or leave with help.

"We will actually give you a plane ticket plus roughly $2,100 to help you reestablish when you get there," Noem said on CNN. "But temporary status is NOT permanent status."

The actual figure posted on CBP's HOME (Assistance to Voluntarily Self-Deport) website is $2,600, which DHS confirmed to Newsweek via email. The $2,100 figure Noem cited on CNN appears to be a rounding error or outdated number; the confirmed program amount is $2,600. The program, which launched in January 2026, also offers migrants cost-free travel arrangements, help organizing departure logistics, and temporary deprioritization from ICE detention while they prepare to leave.

DHS has told Newsweek the voluntary self-deportation route cuts costs by approximately 70 percent compared to formal removal, which the department says averages $17,121 per person when arrest, detention, and removal expenses are combined.

Republican Objections

Not everyone on the right is cheering. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, has warned that ending Haitian TPS could damage jobs and local economies in his state. Communities in states like Ohio have had Haitian TPS holders integrated into local labor markets for years, and abrupt removal at scale carries real economic disruption regardless of the legal merits of the underlying policy. DeWine's objection is not a defense of illegal immigration. It is a downstream consequence question about policy execution that the administration has not publicly addressed.

What Is and Isn't Proven Here

Noem's claim that 2026 removals will soon outpace all of 2025 is an internal projection from the DHS Secretary herself, not an independently verified data point. The administration has not released granular monthly removal figures that would allow outside verification of the trajectory she's describing. The enforcement approach she outlined, warrants first and then collateral arrests, is consistent with ICE operational practices that have been publicly documented, but the "average of over four" figure per operation is Noem's own characterization.

The self-deportation program's cost savings claim ($2,600 incentive vs. $17,121 forced removal) is mathematically plausible on its face, but it assumes a migrant who accepts the incentive would otherwise have required full arrest-detention-removal processing, which isn't necessarily true across the whole eligible population.

What Comes Next

With the Supreme Court's TPS ruling now in place, DHS has the legal authority to proceed with removals for roughly 356,000 Haitians and Syrians. The administration has not announced a specific timeline for when those removal processes begin in earnest. The unanswered question as of June 28 is how many TPS holders will apply for permanent status, how many will take the $2,600 voluntary offer, and how many will contest removal through remaining legal avenues. That number will directly test Noem's six-week deportation projection.