What was the annual breakdown of removals by conviction status (criminal vs. non‑criminal) during the Obama administration?
Executive summary
The annual pattern of removals under President Obama shows high overall counts early in his tenure and a shift in enforcement priorities toward criminals and recent border crossers, but the precise year‑by‑year split between “criminal” and “non‑criminal” removals depends on which dataset and definition one uses and therefore produces divergent portraits in secondary analyses (ICE, DHS, MPI, Pew and advocacy groups differ) [1][2][3]. Available government snapshots show that in some years a plurality or majority of formal removals were recorded as involving criminal convictions, while other compilations of DHS data and independent analyses conclude most removals were of people without serious criminal records—this conflict is rooted in differences between interior vs. border removals, types of convictions counted, and the inclusion of administrative, immigration‑only offenses [4][3][5].
1. What the government reported year by year: headline counts and a moving target
DHS/ICE reported removals peaking in the early Obama years — roughly 400,000 a year at the high point — with FY2013 often cited as the record single year (about 435,000) and FY2014 at 414,481, illustrating that annual totals were large but variable [4][5]; ICE publicly touted that in FY2010 roughly half of removals (about 195,000) were of people with criminal convictions and in FY2011 ICE reported about 216,698 convicted criminals removed (roughly 55% of that year’s removals) [2][6].
2. Conflicting tallies: why “criminal” vs. “non‑criminal” proportions diverge across analyses
Independent researchers and advocacy groups have pointed out that the apparent contradiction—ICE figures showing large criminal shares in some years and other studies finding a majority of removals were non‑criminal—stems from variations in scope and definitions: some tallies use ICE enforcement caseloads only, others use DHS’s broader removal datasets; some count any prior conviction (including traffic or immigration re‑entry) as “criminal,” while other analyses separate “serious/violent” crimes from minor infractions and immigration offenses [3][7][4].
3. Interior versus border removals: the clearest differentiator
Scholars note the clearest pattern is geography: removals of individuals from the U.S. interior increasingly involved people with criminal convictions — in one DHS characterization “more than 90 percent” of interior removals were of noncitizens with convictions the department deems serious — whereas many border‑area removals and returns involved people with no criminal history beyond immigration violations or minor infractions [1][3].
4. The nuance within “criminal”: serious, immigration, and traffic convictions
Even when a removal is categorized as involving a conviction, analysts emphasize that most such convictions were not necessarily violent or serious: an MPI‑style analysis showed that among those with convictions a large share were immigration‑related (reentry) or other less‑serious offenses, and one dataset found that a majority of convicted removals did not have serious or violent convictions [3][7]. Pew’s year‑by‑year tabulations illustrate this nuance too, showing a decline in deportations of immigrants with criminal convictions from 199,000 in 2013 to 168,000 in 2014, reflecting policy shifts and changing operational focus [5].
5. What can be reliably said and what cannot
It is reliable to say the Obama administration presided over very large annual removals (hundreds of thousands), with enforcement priorities formally refocused toward convicted criminals and recent border crossers, and that interior removals were disproportionately criminal in character according to DHS statements [2][1][8]. What cannot be definitively provided from the supplied reporting alone is a single, consistent year‑by‑year table that cleanly splits every annual removal into “criminal” vs. “non‑criminal” categories, because sources use different datasets, definitions (serious vs. any conviction, immigration offenses counted or not), and scopes (ICE vs. DHS aggregate) producing materially different percentages [4][3][5].
6. Bottom line for readers seeking an annual breakdown
For a defensible, reproducible annual breakdown one must specify the source (ICE enforcement removals vs. DHS consolidated removals), the conviction definition (any prior conviction vs. only “serious” or violent convictions), and whether immigration re‑entry and traffic offenses count as “criminal”; within those frames, existing DHS/ICE releases and Pew/MPI compilations provide year‑by‑year counts (examples cited above) but do not converge on a single national percentage for every year without reconciling definitional differences [2][5][3].