Overview
Many media outlets are reporting that President Biden deported more illegal immigrants than President Trump in both his first term and at the pace of his current one. For example:
- Reuters immigration reporter Ted Hesson claims that Trump is “deporting people at a slower rate than Biden’s last year in office.”
- Newsweek politics reporter Dan Gooding claims that Trump is “on track to deport half the number of migrants removed during former President Joe Biden’s last full fiscal year in 2024.”
- BBC reporter Brandon Drenon claims that “deportations under Biden” in the federal government’s 2024 fiscal year exceeded Trump’s “record” from his prior term.
- A local CBS News report claims that “Trump deportation numbers” are “lower than” the “Biden administration.”
- PBS republished an article by Diana Roy of the Council on Foreign Relations which claims that the “Trump administration deported fewer people in February 2025 than the Joe Biden administration did in February the previous year.”
Those statements are based on a false definition of “deportations” that turns reality on its head. In fact, the federal government stopped publishing official data on deportations nearly 30 years ago, but journalists are using another measure in its place that creates an extremely misleading impression.
In contrast, the modern measure that reflects the actual definition of deportations shows that Trump deported illegal immigrants at more than twice the rate of Biden.
Defining Deportations
Prior to 1997, the word “deportation” was strictly defined by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) as the “formal removal of an alien from” the United States.
This differed from an “exclusion,” which meant the “formal denial of an alien’s entry,” including those who recently entered and were physically on U.S. soil but had not established roots. This legal principle, which is crucial to enforcing immigration law, has been explained by the Supreme Court in multiple rulings which state that:
- an immigrant’s “presence on Ellis Island” does “not count as entry into the United States,” and he can be “treated” for “constitutional purposes” as “if stopped at the border.”
- a recent illegal entrant staying in the U.S. with her father is “still in theory of law at the boundary line and had gained no foothold in the United States.”
- a person “whose right to enter the United States is questioned under the immigration laws is to be regarded as if he had stopped at the limit of its jurisdiction, although physically he may be within its boundaries.”
The difference between deporting an illegal immigrant who has been living in the U.S. and expelling one who recently entered is vital because illegal immigrants with a foothold in the country have significant legal protections that recent border crossers do not. This makes it much harder to remove them. It’s also considerably more difficult to apprehend them because they are scattered throughout the general population instead of traveling in groups near the border.
Nevertheless, Congress passed a law in 1996 that did away with the “deportation” and “exclusion” designations. Up to this point, INS published data going back more than 100 years with separate figures for the number of aliens “deported” and “excluded.” But starting in 1997, INS consolidated all of those figures—including the historical data—into a single measure called “formal removals” and wrote:
Removals include those actions known as deportation and exclusion prior to the revision of law that was effective April 1, 1997.
With disregard for that fact, journalists are now misreporting data on “removals” as if they were “deportations.” This is extremely misleading because the bulk of removals are not deportations but people apprehended near the border by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and “turned over” to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “for detention and removal.”
Per the Congressional Research Service, CBP is mainly “responsible for border security,” while ICE is mainly “responsible for enforcing immigration laws in the U.S. interior.”
In 2024, the highest year for removals in the Biden administration, only 18% of all removals were arrested by ICE, while the rest were arrested by CBP near the border. In other words, 82% of what the media counts as deportations are not.
President Obama coyly admitted this when taking flak from his allies for “deporting” more immigrants than President Bush. During a 2011 meeting with Hispanic media outlets, a reporter from AOL Latino asked Obama why he has “been deporting much more immigrants than the previous administration did in eight years,” and he replied:
The statistics are actually a little deceptive because what we’ve been doing is with the stronger border enforcement we’ve been apprehending folks at the borders and sending them back. That is counted as a deportation, even though they may have only been held for a day or 48 hours, sent back—that’s counted as a deportation.
Contrary to Obama, that’s not counted as a deportation by anyone informed about the situation, and higher numbers of removals aren’t necessarily a sign of “stronger border enforcement.” As detailed in an extensive Congressional Research Service report about this issue, it’s more about legal processes than anything else.
Moreover, better border enforcement can lead to fewer removals by reducing the number of people who attempt to cross the border. Obama’s Secretary of Homeland Security acknowledged this in 2015 when he attributed fewer removals that year to a “lower level of attempted illegal migration at our borders.”
Actual Deportations
Despite the deletion of “deportations” from the law, ICE still measures a metric that accords with the strict meaning of the word and partly demonstrates how a president enforces immigration laws. It’s called “interior removals” and is defined by ICE as follows:
An individual removed by ICE who is identified or apprehended in the United States by an ICE officer or agent. This category excludes those apprehended at the immediate border while attempting to unlawfully enter the United States.
Data on interior removals, obtained from two ICE reports, show that Biden (2021–2024) averaged 53% less deportations per year than Trump (2017–2020):
The transitions between the datasets and presidencies have slight offsets because the annual datasets begin on the first day of the federal fiscal year (October 1), while presidential inaugurations take place four months later on January 20.
Deporting Criminals
Another important measure of immigration enforcement is the number of convicted criminals deported. The Biden administration claimed to be focused on this goal.
Hence, Congressman Jamie Raskin (D–MD) recently criticized Trump while claiming that the Biden administration removed the illegal immigrants “who should not be here.”
Beyond the fact that the Biden administration failed to remove the illegal immigrants who murdered Laken Riley, Jocelyn Nungaray, and Rachel Morin, it also deported an average of 53% fewer convicted criminals per year than the Trump administration:
The reduced numbers of criminal deportations under Biden are particularly shocking given the concurrent rise of illegal immigrants who entered the country without any vetting for criminality. These “gotaways”—or people who are detected by Border Patrol but not apprehended—swelled to 6.1 times the pre-Biden average by 2023:
Yet, prominent Democrats insisted that the “border is secure” throughout this period, including VP Kamala Harris, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and others.
Summary
An array of media outlets are reporting the polar opposite of the truth by claiming that Biden deported more illegal immigrants than Trump. This narrative is rooted in a falsehood that government data on “removals” is equivalent to “deportations.”
The designation of “deportations” was eliminated by a 1996 law, but ICE still records a metric that accords with the actual meaning of the word. It’s called “interior removals,” and this measure shows that Trump deported illegal immigrants and convicted criminals at more than twice the rate of Biden.
Biden’s lower numbers occurred even though the number of unvetted immigrants pouring into the U.S. sextupled under his watch.
James D. Agresti is the president of Just Facts, a research and educational institute dedicated to publishing facts about public policies and teaching research skills.
