What was the annual breakdown of CBP turn‑backs versus ICE removals during each fiscal year of the Obama administration?
Executive summary
A precise, year‑by‑year table that separates “CBP turn‑backs” (border returns/expedited returns executed by Customs and Border Protection) from “ICE removals” (formal removals recorded by Immigration and Customs Enforcement) for each fiscal year of the Obama presidency is not fully reproducible from the provided reporting; the sources make clear the difference between returns and removals and offer snapshots and totals—for example, DHS data show combined CBP+ICE removals near 392,000 in FY2011 (ICE and CBP together) and roughly 450,954 removals/returns in FY2016—but they do not all publish a clean, single table of CBP “turn‑backs” versus ICE‑credited removals for each FY2009–FY2016 year in the materials supplied here [1] [2] [3].
1. Why the requested breakdown is conceptually simple but practically messy
The core distinction—“removals” (formal orders recorded by DHS components) versus “returns/turn‑backs” (more administrative departures often handled at the border)—is routinely emphasized in the sources because it changes the legal consequences for migrants and how enforcement is counted, and that complicates any neat annual split: DHS and analysts note that CBP and ICE both carry out removals and that returns are a different category, yet public summaries and press releases sometimes aggregate CBP and ICE actions or emphasize one metric over the other, making apples‑to‑apples annual comparisons difficult without the raw DHS tables [1] [4].
2. What the available figures show about totals and trends under Obama
Multiple sources show that total DHS repatriations (removals plus returns) peaked in the early Obama years and then declined: ICE and CBP together were reported at about 391,953 “removals” for FY2011, very near the 2009 high of roughly 393,457, and by the end of the administration FY2016 totals for removals and returns were reported at roughly 450,954 actions (the FY2016 DHS reporting and ICE archive provide snapshots of Border Patrol apprehensions and removals that year) while ICE reported 240,255 removals in 2016 specifically, illustrating a downward interior‑removal trend and large border processing activity [1] [3] [2] [4].
3. The composition matters: border apprehensions versus interior removals
Analysts and advocacy groups stress that a large share of removals credited to ICE during the Obama years stemmed from CBP border apprehensions handed off to ICE rather than interior enforcement sweeps, and that interior ICE removals declined after new enforcement priorities in the mid‑2010s; MPI, CIS, Econofact and BPC materials all point to a shift where border‑origin cases became a larger share of removals and interior criminal‑alien removals fell [4] [5] [6] [2].
4. What cannot be stated from the supplied reporting
The supplied pieces do not provide a single authoritative, complete annual list for FY2009–FY2016 that isolates “CBP turn‑backs/returns” and “ICE removals” side‑by‑side for every fiscal year in one table; while some years and totals are cited (FY2011 combined removals, FY2016 ICE removals, aggregate Obama‑era totals), compiling an exact annual breakdown requires consulting the DHS/OIS yearbook or the agencies’ FY tables that disaggregate “removals” by initial arresting agency and “returns/expedited removals” by CBP—documents not fully reproduced in the excerpts provided [1] [3] [2] [7].
5. Reading the politics through the numbers
Different actors use the same counting conventions to advance competing narratives: advocates and some researchers emphasize the policy shift away from interior removals and the human‑rights implications of rapid administrative expulsions, while others (and some agency press releases) highlight headline removal totals to portray robust enforcement; several sources explicitly warn that counting only removals inflates impressions of interior enforcement because CBP border returns are legally and practically distinct from ICE’s interior removals [1] [8] [4].
6. Practical next step for a definitive table
To produce the exact annual CBP returns (turn‑backs/expedited returns) versus ICE removals for FY2009–FY2016, the most reliable path is to extract the annual “Removals and Returns” tables and the “Removals by Initial Arresting Agency” breakdowns from DHS’s Yearbook of Immigration Statistics and ICE/CBP archived enforcement tables [7] [3] [2]; the reporting here makes clear the data exist but the necessary disaggregated year‑by‑year table was not fully quoted in the materials supplied [1] [2].