From January through September 2025, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported 174 people that were renewing their protections from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program, the head of the agency has said in a letter reviewed by the Guardian.

The letter, written by ICE’s acting director, Todd Lyons, and sent to the Illinois congressional representative Delia Ramirez, also confirmed that a total of 270 Daca recipients were arrested during that same timeframe, or over the first nine months of Donald Trump’s second presidency.

How many Daca recipients and applicants had been targeted for arrest and deportation in 2025 was previously unclear, after the former homeland security secretary Kristi Noem gave conflicting information in two separate letters to members of Congress.

The figures as cited by Lyons amounted to a clear rebuke by the Trump administration against a program established in 2012 – during Barack Obama’s presidency – allowing undocumented people who were brought to the US as children to live and work in the country with certain protections from deportation. Daca has been the subject of ongoing contentious litigation, placing it – and the fate of its recipients, known as “Dreamers” – at risk.

Data from US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) says there are about 533,000 active Dreamers nationwide. Daca recipients are required to undergo vetting when reapplying to the program.

In a statement to the Guardian, Ramirez called the Daca recipients’ deportation evidence of a “white nationalist agenda” laid out by the Trump administration and White House adviser Stephen Miller.

“[The Department of Homeland Security, DHS] has refused to abide by the protections that Daca provides to Dreamers, [and] it is clear that Daca recipients are at great risk,” the congresswoman’s statement said. “The mandate from Trump and Miller is clear: our neighbors will continue to be terrorized, detention will continue to be unsafe and fascists will continue to try to profit from our pain.

“We must abolish ICE and dismantle DHS.”

In a statement, the DHS said that between late September and mid-November of 2025, there were 73 additional Daca recipients arrested by ICE. That brought the number of Daca recipients arrested by ICE over the first 11 months of 2025 to at least 343.

“To be clear: Daca does not confer any form of legal status in this country,” a DHS spokesperson said. “Any illegal alien who is a Daca recipient may be subject to arrest and deportation for a number of reasons, including if they’ve committed a crime”.

The DHS spokesperson said that the majority of the Daca recipients arrested had been charged with a crime. The spokesperson then added a list of photos of undocumented people arrested by the agency.

According to the latest letter from Lyons, dated 7 April, a “scripting issue” led to the confusion between both of Noem’s earlier missives.

Lyons said that a letter from 12 January, from Noem to Ramirez and other members of Congress, contained the accurate numbers. The January letter also included a breakdown of the number of Daca recipients arrested, broken down by ICE’s areas of responsibility.

A separate Noem letter to the US senator Dick Durbin, of Illinois, contained inaccurate data, according to Lyons.

Lyons is set to retire from ICE at the end of May.

The arrests of Daca recipients follows the Trump administration’s commitment to targeting people who immigrated to the US without permission, including ones whose deportations were not priorities under previous presidencies.

According to an analysis by the Guardian, the Trump administration has arrested and deported refugees, people with temporary protected status, asylum seekers, victims of crime and other immigrants with deportation protections in place.