How many people were deported during each year of the Biden administration (2021–2025)?
Executive summary
A precise, year-by-year tally of people “deported” during the Biden administration (calendar years 2021–2025) cannot be produced from the documents provided because sources mix fiscal-year totals, partial-year snapshots and conflicting aggregates; official ICE/DHS tabulations are the authoritative source but the supplied excerpts do not deliver a complete, consistent calendar-year series [1] [2]. The reporting available does, however, supply specific figures for some fiscal years and highlights major discrepancies in public accounts that any careful reader must weigh [3] [4] [5].
1. What the question actually asks — calendar year vs. fiscal year and “deported” definitions
Asking “How many people were deported during each year of the Biden administration (2021–2025)?” requires settling two technical choices that sources often conflate: whether to count calendar years (Jan–Dec) or DHS/ICE fiscal years (Oct–Sep), and whether to include returns, expulsions (e.g., Title 42/expulsions), removals with orders of removal, or voluntary departures — different outlets bundle these categories differently and the ICE/DHS statistics page documents those distinctions [1].
2. Numbers reported in the available sources — the specific figures that exist in the file set
One source reports an unusually low FY2021 removal count of 59,011, characterizing FY2021 as “the lowest deportation numbers in decades” [3]. Migration Policy Project’s analysis states the Biden administration carried out roughly 1.1 million deportations from the start of FY2021 through February 2024 — a cumulative fiscal-period figure on pace to match Trump’s four-year total — and notes the administration carried out more than 505,000 administrative returns through February 2024 [2]. Separate reporting says there were about 685,000 total deportations in fiscal year 2024 alone under Biden [4], a figure that is substantially larger than the single-year numbers cited elsewhere.
3. Contradictions in major public accounts and suspect aggregates
A Newsweek excerpt asserts “over 4.6 million people were removed from the U.S. between January 2021 and November 2024,” a claim that stands in stark contrast to other public counts and to Migration Policy’s much smaller cumulative number through early 2024 — a contradiction underscoring problems with aggregation methods or definitions across outlets [5] [2]. Other analysts and interest groups also produce opposing interpretations: for example, the Center for Immigration Studies’ review argues that deportations of criminal aliens fell sharply under Biden (a substantive claim about composition, not total volumes) [6]. TRAC and ICE produce their own reporting frameworks that are necessary to reconcile these differences but are not fully reproduced in the provided snippets [7] [1].
4. The closest thing to a direct answer from available material
Using only the supplied excerpts, the most defensible specific annual figures are limited: FY2021 — 59,011 removals as reported by The Global Statistics [3]; FY2024 — roughly 685,000 total deportations reported in Migration Policy/Stateline summaries of DHS data [4] [2]. For FY2022 and FY2023 the provided sources do not give single-year numeric totals that can be cited unambiguously in calendar-year terms; Migration Policy’s cumulative 1.1 million through Feb 2024 implies substantial removals in FY2022–FY2023 but does not break them into annual calendar-year counts in the snippets provided [2]. For 2025, only early partial figures and projections in other outlets are available in the excerpts [5] [8], not a complete year total that can be attributed to Biden’s presidency (and by January 2025 the presidency had ended).
5. Bottom line and recommended authoritative next step
The supplied reporting makes clear that headlines about “more deportations under Biden than Trump” or “millions removed” rest on different counting methods and timeframes; a definitive, year-by-year calendar count for 2021–2025 requires consulting the official ICE/DHS removals and returns tables (ICE/ERO and DHS OHSS yearbooks and monthly tables) rather than relying on secondary summaries [1] [2]. The best path to a precise answer is to extract calendar-year removal and return totals directly from DHS/ICE statistical releases and reconcile Title 42 expulsions, administrative returns, and formal removals — a step the current excerpts do not permit.