How do DHS/OHSS and ICE define and differentiate 'removals', 'returns', and 'expulsions' across fiscal years?
Executive summary
DHS/OHSS and ICE use related but distinct categories—removals, returns, and expulsions—to count people who leave the United States, and those labels matter because they carry different legal bases, penalties, and agency roles [1] [2]. OHSS aggregates DHS-wide “repatriations” that include removals, returns, and Title 42 expulsions, while ICE’s own removals reporting can fold in returns and expulsions depending on the dataset, producing overlapping but non-identical totals across fiscal years [1] [3] [4].
1. Definitions on paper: what each term means in DHS/OHSS accounting
OHSS defines removals as the compulsory, confirmed movement of an inadmissible or removable noncitizen from the United States based on a final order of removal, returns as confirmed movements not based on an order of removal, and expulsions as departures under the Title 42 public‑health order used during the COVID‑19 pandemic [1] [2]. OHSS explicitly groups these three outcomes under the Repatriations Key Homeland Security Metric to produce a DHS‑wide tally of people sent out of the country, and notes that repatriations count repeat occurrences of the same person multiple times [1].
2. ICE’s practice: a narrower but sometimes blended “removals” tally
ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) produces removal figures that are operationally focused and, in ICE footnotes, may include returns and expulsions in agency totals or dashboards—so an “ICE removal” figure can differ in scope from the OHSS removal count [3] [4]. ICE’s ERO dashboard reports removals under Title 8 authority and separately notes it does not include CBP removals or Title 42 expulsions in some dashboards, resulting in variation by product and quarter [5] [3].
3. Legal and practical distinctions that change the meaning of counts
A formal removal (Title 8) carries administrative or criminal consequences for future reentry and is tied to a final order; returns do not carry those same administrative penalties and are often administrative or voluntary outcomes such as withdrawals or voluntary returns; Title 42 expulsions were treated as a separate, expedited public‑health mechanism with different procedural protections and tracking during March 2020–May 2023 [1] [2] [6]. OHSS and ICE therefore treat the categories differently because the underlying statutes and procedures differ, and those legal differences affect both the person’s future admissibility and how agencies code the event in statistics [1] [7].
4. Fiscal‑year reporting quirks that create misleading comparisons
Fiscal years run Oct 1–Sept 30 and DHS data are often “locked” only after a close‑out period, with quarterly arrears and later corrections that can change year totals; ICE likewise counts removals confirmed by a cutoff that can shift counts across adjacent fiscal years [8] [3] [7]. Because OHSS aggregates across ICE, CBP (USBP and OFO), and counts Title 42 expulsions in certain years, DHS repatriation totals can be much larger than ICE’s ERO removals alone, and comparing agencies or years without attention to which categories are included leads to confusion [9] [1].
5. Why the numbers seem to jump between administrations and reports
Some analysts note that returns are a large, cheaper share of “repatriations” and that counting choices—whether to exclude administrative/enforcement returns or Title 42 expulsions—shape headlines about whether deportations rose or fell between administrations [10] [4]. OHSS’s Yearbook tables emphasize the breakdown between removals and returns historically, while ICE’s public releases sometimes spotlight removals in aggregate including certain returns or expulsions, creating an arena for competing narratives and potential spin [2] [3] [5].
6. Stakes, interpretations, and limits of available reporting
Different stakeholders have incentives: ICE may emphasize removals to show enforcement activity while OHSS presents comprehensive repatriations for cross‑agency visibility; independent analysts warn that ICE’s inclusion of returns/expulsions in some removal tallies can overstate or obscure the legal severity of actions counted [4] [3] [1]. The available sources document definitions and reporting mechanics but do not settle contested normative judgments about enforcement policy; this analysis sticks to how DHS/OHSS and ICE define and count removals, returns, and expulsions across fiscal years as presented in their reporting [1] [2] [3].