What is the difference between DHS 'removals' and 'returns' and how are they counted?
Executive summary
DHS distinguishes "removals"—compulsory departures based on a removal order that carry administrative or criminal consequences for future reentry—from "returns," which are confirmed movements out of the United States that occur without an order of removal and generally do not carry those penalties [1] [2] [3]. Reporting aggregates both into "repatriations" and other high‑level totals, but the two categories have different legal meaning and are counted with methods that can make headline totals misleading [2] [4].
1. What "removals" are and why they matter
A removal is the forced, confirmed movement of an inadmissible or deportable person out of the United States that is carried out pursuant to an order of removal; by statute and DHS definitions a removal triggers administrative or criminal consequences for subsequent unlawful reentry and can include ordinary removal, expedited removal, reinstatements, and other formal procedures [1] [2] [3]. The Congressional Research Service and DHS materials emphasize that removals can occur after immigration court proceedings or through administrative mechanisms like expedited removal and reinstatement, and those removed are subject to bars on return that are legally meaningful [5] [2].
2. What "returns" are and how they differ from removals
Returns are the confirmed movement of an inadmissible or deportable noncitizen out of the United States that is not based on an order of removal—examples include voluntary departures, CBP withdrawals of application for admission at ports of entry, some administrative returns of crew, and certain border returns—and they generally do not carry the same administrative penalties or criminal bars that formal removals do [1] [3] [6]. DHS explicitly notes the distinction: repatriations include removals (with penalties), returns (without penalties), and expulsions under public health authorities like Title 42 during 2020–2023, underscoring that not all outbound movements are equivalent under law [2].
3. How DHS counts removals and returns (and why totals can be confusing)
DHS reporting systems—OHSS monthly tables, the Repatriations KHSM, ICE ERO spreadsheets, and OIS yearbooks—count "immigration events" and may count the same person multiple times if they are encountered, arrested, repatriated, or otherwise processed more than once during the reporting period; OHSS warns that persons repatriated more than once are counted multiple times [7] [2]. Moreover, some DHS datasets aggregate removals and returns across components (ICE, CBP, OFO) while other ICE products report only interior removals, so comparing a headline "deportations" number across different releases without checking scope (ICE-only vs DHS-wide, removals vs returns vs expulsions) risks conflating dissimilar measures [4] [5]. The historical Yearbook Table 39 and subsequent OHSS tables document consistent definitional language—removals are based on orders; returns are not—but DHS also includes expulsions and administrative returns in repatriation totals, which complicates simple interpretations of "how many people were deported" [8] [3] [2].
4. Policy and political implications of counting choices
Because returns do not carry the same statutory penalties as removals, treating them interchangeably in public statements inflates the apparent number of people subject to formal removal orders and masks differences in enforcement severity; critics have argued that administrations sometimes use broad terms like "deportations" to combine removals, returns, and voluntary departures for political effect, while DHS data custodians (OHSS) publish the underlying breakdowns needed for scrutiny [4] [2]. Reporters and analysts must therefore check whether figures represent ICE interior removals, CBP returns at the border, voluntarily self‑departures, or expulsions under public‑health authority—each is counted differently and has distinct legal consequences [5] [2].
5. Bottom line for interpreting DHS numbers
"Removals" are formal, order‑based departures that carry legal consequences; "returns" are non‑order departures that generally do not; DHS aggregates both into repatriation tallies and counts events (not unique people), so headline totals can overstate how many individuals were formally removed and understate the legal distinctions among different types of outbound movement [1] [2] [7]. Where reporting does not break out component‑level details—ICE versus CBP—or does not distinguish expulsions or voluntary departures, additional digging into OHSS tables, ICE ERO spreadsheets, and OIS yearbook tables is required to know exactly what was counted [4] [7] [5].