ISTANBUL 

President Donald Trump’s first-term deportation numbers fell short compared to Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s administrations, despite his reputation for emphasizing immigration enforcement.

US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) statistics show Biden oversaw 1.3 million more deportations during his first two years in office than Trump achieved during his entire first term. Obama also deported 30,000 more than Trump during his first four years.

Trump’s administration deported 3.13 million people during his first term. In comparison, Obama deported 3.16 million, while Biden deported 4.44 million individuals in 2021 and 2022. The sharp increase under Biden is partly attributed to coronavirus public health measures that expedited the removal of individuals deemed “public health risks.”

‘Returner-in-chief’

The Biden administration revived deportation practices reminiscent of early Obama-era policies. For the first time in more than a decade, the majority of removals under Biden involved “voluntary returns,” where migrants admitted to entering the US unlawfully but were allowed to leave without receiving formal removal orders.

While Obama was frequently labeled the “deporter-in-chief,” critics have dubbed Biden the “returner-in-chief.” Under Biden, deportations have spanned more than 170 countries, potentially setting a record.

When accounting for deportations, expulsions and measures to block unauthorized entries, Biden’s administration oversaw nearly 4.4 million repatriations. The figure already surpasses totals from any single presidential term since George W. Bush’s second term, which reached 5 million. The increased enforcement, however, has contributed to an immigration court backlog of 3.6 million pending removal cases.

Trump’s approach in 2025

Trump’s deportation numbers during his first term lagged significantly behind Biden’s. Daily border encounters at the end of Biden’s tenure ranged from 1,200 to 1,400, compared to 2,253 encounters logged in the first three days of Trump’s second term, according to DHS data.

In his second inaugural address, Trump vowed to declare a national emergency at the US southern border and pledged to halt all illegal entries. “We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came,” he said.

Trump’s administration has already resumed deportation flights, repatriating migrants to countries such as Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela. Immigration raids targeting undocumented migrants have also been conducted in the states of Arizona, California, Texas, New York and Colorado.