The federal government’s top immigration data expert has left the Department of Homeland Security, and his former colleagues say the loss signals a troubling retreat from transparency under the Trump administration.
Marc Rosenblum, who spent more than a decade at DHS and founded its Office of Homeland Security Statistics (OHSS) in 2023, announced his departure last month on LinkedIn. His exit, first reported by The Atlantic, comes amid reports that Trump officials blocked him from publishing monthly immigration data—data that now ends in 2024.
Rosenblum himself didn’t mince words about why he walked away. In his LinkedIn post, he said he was leaving an “often hostile work environment” and expressed relief at ending his relationship with the current administration.
“Between the war on immigrants, the war on feds, and the war on facts (not to mention the crazy war in Iran and the brazen corruption), I just need a change,” he wrote.
His departure has raised alarms beyond Democratic circles. Even conservative immigration hawks—who generally support the administration’s hardline approach—have criticized the lack of timely data. The Oversight Project, a nonprofit group pushing for mass deportations, has sued the Trump administration over unanswered Freedom of Information Act requests for deportation figures and has floated the possibility that publicly reported numbers are being inflated.
The administration continues to tout “the most transparent Administration in history,” but critics argue the data void tells a different story.
The Man Behind the Numbers
Rosenblum was no faceless bureaucrat. He played a central role in creating OHSS in 2023, a unit designed to centralize and publish comprehensive immigration data. The office was established with bipartisan support, reflecting a shared desire for better numbers in a policy area often driven by anecdote and spin.
Two former DHS officials who served under the Biden administration told The Daily Wire that Rosenblum was relentlessly nonpartisan—committed to publishing data even when it reflected poorly on the president of the day.
“He was one of those people whose commitment was just to the work,” one ex-official said. “I didn’t know what his political inclinations were at all the entire time I worked with him because many times the data that he wanted to publish didn’t look great for us during the Biden administration.”
Another former Biden-era DHS official described Rosenblum as purely “a data guy,” capable of pulling together information from across the sprawling department—from Customs and Border Protection’s fentanyl seizures at the northern border to Coast Guard interceptions of Cuban and Haitian migrants on the high seas. He could parse which populations were being targeted by ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations and at what rate, and he tracked airport screenings nationwide.
The official said Rosenblum’s work helped department leaders, the White House, the press, and the public understand what was actually happening at the border and beyond. “If you don’t have a commitment to actually looking at data, then at the end of the day, you’re just gonna lose credibility,” the ex-fed added. “If we’re gonna be actually transparent and accountable to the taxpayers you need data.”
A Rare Washington Consensus
Notably, Rosenblum’s departure drew a supportive comment from an unlikely corner: Todd Lyons, the recently departed acting ICE director under Trump, wrote “it was great to work with you” and wished him “luck with the next chapter!”
The gesture underscores the unusual respect Rosenblum commanded across partisan lines—even among officials who enforce the very policies he criticized.
Rosenblum declined to comment further on his reasons for leaving, but the subtext is hard to miss. His LinkedIn post was laced with frustration, and he lamented leaving behind “outstanding career federal civil servants” who produce “high-quality results in a challenging and often hostile work environment.”
In response to The Daily Wire’s inquiries, a DHS spokesperson said, “People are always welcome to their opinion, that doesn’t make it right or factual.” The spokesperson added that the department would not comment on personal decisions.
The Data Gap
The stakes of Rosenblum’s exit are concrete. DHS currently says “more than 3 million illegal aliens have left” the country during Trump’s first year back in office, estimating that 2.2 million self-deported. ICE performed roughly 300,000 deportations in that same period—far short of Trump’s stated goal of 1 million removals annually.
But with Rosenblum gone and monthly statistics halted, verifying those claims becomes nearly impossible. The Oversight Project’s lawsuit over FOIA requests adds another layer of pressure on an administration that promised unprecedented openness but has yet to deliver on that promise in the immigration arena.
For now, the void left by Rosenblum is more than a personnel gap—it’s a informational one. And as his former colleague put it, without data, decisions are “based on wins” rather than reality, and credibility inevitably suffers.
Source: www.dailywire.com — https://www.dailywire.com/news/dhs-immigration-data-wiz-calls-it-quits