How many formal removal orders were issued each fiscal year under the Biden administration, broken down by criminal vs. noncriminal grounds?
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Executive summary
Public sources supplied here do not contain a clear, year-by-year table of formal removal orders under the Biden administration broken down into “criminal” versus “non‑criminal” grounds, so a precise numeric answer by fiscal year cannot be produced from these materials; available reporting allows only partial reconstruction and trend statements about criminal‑alien removals and total removals/returns [1] [2] [3]. Where concrete figures are reported in the supplied sources they refer either to total removals/returns in aggregate or to narrower counts (such as ICE “removals of aliens with criminal convictions or pending charges”) rather than an explicit, consistent fiscal‑year list of formal removal orders split by legal ground [2] [3].
1. What the question asks and what the documentation actually provides
The user is asking for the number of formal removal orders issued each fiscal year under the Biden presidency, separated into removals based on criminal grounds versus those based on noncriminal immigration violations; the ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) statistics page exists and is the authoritative source for removals data, but the extracts provided here do not include a ready-made fiscal‑year table of “formal removal orders” broken down by criminal and noncriminal categories, so the requested precise yearly counts cannot be assembled from the supplied reporting [1].
2. What the supplied ICE and research sources do report
The Migration Policy Institute’s synthesis reports that the Biden administration recorded roughly 1.1 million deportations/removals and returns from FY2021 through February 2024 and that FY2024 removals surged after the end of Title 42, with 775,000 removals/returns processed in the 12 months after Title 42 ended and 316,000 processed via expedited removal between May 2023 and March 2024 [2]. ICE’s own statistics site provides program definitions and operational detail and is the place that would contain the formal fiscal‑year removal tallies, but the supplied ICE snippets here do not include a fiscal‑year breakdown by criminal versus noncriminal grounds [1].
3. What reporting about “criminal” removals shows (trends, not a full table)
Conservative research groups and several congressional Republican reports emphasize steep declines in removals of people with criminal convictions under the Biden administration and provide specific aggregated figures: the Center for Immigration Studies reported 27,881 at‑large arrests of aliens with criminal convictions or pending charges during the first three fiscal years of the Biden administration (FY21: 7,561; FY22: 7,881; FY23: 12,376) and asserted large declines in detainers and in removals of criminal aliens compared with the prior administration [3]. Congressional Republican staff documents and Oversight Committee materials similarly claim, citing ICE data, that ICE removed substantially fewer criminal aliens in FY2023 vs prior years (for example, reporting a 41 percent decline relative to FY2019 in one excerpt) [4] [5]. These sources document a clear downward trend in criminal‑conviction removals as presented by those authors, but they are not the same as an authoritative, neutral ICE fiscal‑year breakdown of formal removal orders by statutory ground [3] [4] [5].
4. Reconciling the gaps and what would be needed for a definitive answer
To produce the exact fiscal‑year counts requested — the number of formal removal orders issued in each fiscal year under Biden, disaggregated by criminal vs noncriminal grounds — the primary source would be ICE/Department of Homeland Security enforcement tables or the Office of Immigration Statistics yearbooks that list removals by fiscal year and by charge/ground. The supplied sources point to ICE and to policy analyses [1] [2] but do not include the specific tabulated breakdown; therefore any precise per‑FY numeric table would require consulting ICE’s full statistics tables or DHS Yearbook data not included in the materials provided [1] [2].
5. Bottom line and journalistic judgement
Available reporting shows the Biden years encompassed both very large totals of removals/returns (on pace to match or exceed prior administrations in aggregate in some periods) and contested, emphasized declines in removals of people described by some sources as “criminal aliens”; however, the exact fiscal‑year counts of formal removal orders split by criminal versus noncriminal grounds cannot be verified from the supplied documents and would require pulling the detailed ICE/DHS removal tables or Yearbook datasets [2] [3] [1]. The supplied partisan and congressional sources highlight trends and criticisms—often in service of oversight or advocacy agendas—and should be cross‑checked against the underlying ICE/DHS data for a definitive numeric breakdown [3] [4] [5].