Deportations during Biden's administration are close to matching those during Trump's presidency

SEATTLE - Deportations and expulsions under the Biden administration are reaching heights that haven't been seen in more than a decade.

According to reports, close to 1.1 million deportations have taken place since the beginning of fiscal year 2021 through February 2024. The data shows that, under President Biden, deportations are on pace to match the 1.5 million deportations carried out during the four years Donald Trump was in office.

Despite the high number of deportations, the data does not include the 3 million expulsions of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border irregularly that occurred under the pandemic-era Title 42 order between March 2020 and May 2023, which gave the President authority to exclude people from certain countries during the COVID-19 public health emergency.

If we combine deportations and expulsions and other actions to block migrants without permission to enter the country, the Biden administration has seen nearly 4.4 million repatriations, the most in any single presidential term since George W. Bush, who had 5 million repatriations in his second term.

The Biden administration has seen a record number of irregular border crossings. From FY 2021 through February 2024, authorities encountered unauthorized migrants about 9.4 million times, more than three times as many as under Trump. In the 12 months since Title 42 ended, 775,000 unauthorized migrants were removed from U.S. soil and returned to their countries of origin. That number was more than in any previous fiscal year since 2010.

With immigration being one of the biggest issues for voters looking ahead to the presidential election in November, President Biden recently proposed a change to asylum rules that could fast-track deportations for some migrants. The proposed chance applied to people viewed as unlikely to be eligible for asylum as they pose a national security risk, thus speeding up the deportation process at an earlier stage of the review.

Despite the high numbers of deportations and expulsions, the Biden administration has responded to record numbers of irregular border arrivals with policies intended to encourage those who are crossing to seek a lawful pathway into the United States. For example, a special humanitarian parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans was developed in order to allow them a temporary right to stay and work in the U.S.

But even with the creation of new programs and rules, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is having trouble keeping up with the record pace of arrivals. Currently, the immigration court backlog stands at 3.7 million removal cases and the new policy is intended to limit the growth of this backlog and deter future arrivals.

Approximately almost 600,000 of the 1.1 million deportations under President Biden have been catalogued as enforcement returns, where migrants acknowledge they arrived in the United States unlawfully but are allowed to voluntarily depart without receiving a formal removal order. During fiscal year 2023 there were a total of 289,000 enforcement returns, the most since 2010 when DHS carried out 410,000 returns of unauthorized migrants.

According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center, the share of voters who favor a national effort by law enforcement to deport undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S. has increased from only 26% in 2021 to 37%.

As always, Democrats and Republicans are on different sides of this issue. Roughly six-in-ten Trump supporters say there should be a national effort to deport undocumented immigrants while only 11% of Democrats support this view, according to Pew Research Center data.