How many us citizens were deported during the obama
Executive summary
The U.S. government deported millions of noncitizens during Barack Obama’s two terms—official DHS “removals” totals are commonly cited as roughly 2–3 million—but the number of U.S. citizens actually deported during the Obama era is not a tracked or reliably reported statistic and appears to be vanishingly small though not zero in documented mistaken cases [1] [2] [3]. Investigations and advocacy groups have uncovered and tallied instances of citizens detained or wrongly removed by immigration authorities, but the absence of central tracking by DHS means there is no authoritative count of citizens deported under Obama [3].
1. What “deportation” means in official tallies
Federal reporting distinguishes “removals” (formal orders to expel noncitizens) from “returns” (apprehensions and expulsions at the border), and DHS removal statistics cited for the Obama years refer to noncitizens, not U.S. citizens; analysts and fact briefs report Obama-era removals in the range of millions of noncitizens over his two terms (commonly cited figures include roughly 2 million to about 3 million total removals) [1] [2] [4].
2. The headline numbers: millions of noncitizens removed under Obama
Multiple policy and research outlets document high removal totals during Obama’s presidency—Fiscal Year 2013 alone saw a record roughly 438,421 removals and cumulative totals across the administration are reported in the millions—figures that fuel the “deporter‑in‑chief” label from immigrant‑rights advocates [1] [5] [6].
3. Mistaken detention and deportation of U.S. citizens: documented but unquantified
Investigations by outlets such as ProPublica have found dozens—indeed a compiled tally that is “almost certainly incomplete” has found more than 170 Americans detained by immigration agents across multiple administrations, and the reporting explicitly notes a history of mistaken detentions and even deportations in prior eras, including cases connected to the Obama administration, but stresses the incompleteness of any public tally [3].
4. Why an exact count of U.S. citizens deported under Obama cannot be produced from public sources
The government has long failed to systematically track how often immigration enforcement detains or expels U.S. citizens; journalists and watchdogs have filled some gaps by compiling lawsuits, local reporting and social‑media accounts, but those methods produce an incomplete minimum, not a comprehensive total—meaning researchers cannot credibly state a precise number of citizens deported during Obama from available public records [3].
5. Competing narratives and the hidden incentives in the data
Advocacy groups and mainstream analysts diverge in emphasis: immigrant‑rights groups emphasize due‑process failures and wrongful deportations under aggressive removal programs, while policy defenders point to shifts in enforcement priorities toward criminals and recent border crossers (Migration Policy Institute documents the prioritization change) and to the technical definitions that inflate comparisons with other presidencies; both sides use DHS numbers selectively to bolster narratives about policy success or harm [7] [6] [8].
6. Bottom line — the direct answer
There is no authoritative public number for how many U.S. citizens were deported during the Obama administration because DHS did not and does not systematically track citizen detentions‑turned‑deportations; the documented evidence shows that mistaken detentions and at least some wrongful removals of U.S. citizens have occurred (and journalists have assembled partial tallies), but those investigations cannot be used to produce a definitive nationwide count for the Obama years [3].