Deportation rates were higher under obama

1. Obama’s headline numbers: the peaks and the totals

Obama presided over some of the highest annual removal totals in recent history, including roughly 409,849 removals in 2012 and multiyear peaks that led advocates to call him the “Deporter in Chief,” and several outlets and aggregate accounts put Obama-era removals in the millions ^{[4] [3] [5]}.

2. Different ways to count: removals, returns, interior removals and percent of population

Analysts warn that “deportation” can mean different things: formal removals, voluntary returns at the border, or interior removals after arrests inland; when counting removals as a share of the estimated unauthorized population, Cato’s historical tabulation shows Obama with an average removal rate higher than Bush or Trump (3.33 percent per year in the cited series), while other work emphasizes that returns fell under Obama even as formal removals rose ^{[1] [6]}.

3. Interior enforcement was a particular driver of high Obama-era figures

Several studies and summaries highlight that interior removals — people apprehended and removed from inside the United States rather than at the border — were especially elevated in Obama’s first term, averaging over 200,000 per year in interior removals, a number substantially higher than reported interior removals under the Trump administration ^{[2] [7]}.

4. Priorities, policy changes and political framing matter

The Obama administration instituted enforcement priorities that emphasized recent border crossers and people with criminal convictions, and those priorities shifted removals toward certain groups; Migration Policy and other analysts note that policy and program inheritances (such as Secure Communities) and statutory changes dating back to the 1990s shaped the tools available to Obama’s DHS ^[8]. Political narratives amplified different elements: immigrant-rights groups seized on high raw removal totals to criticize Obama, while enforcement advocates argued he focused removals on criminals ^{[3] [9]}.

5. Trump’s rhetoric vs. his removal numbers

Despite campaign promises of mass expulsions, multiple independent analyses and academic studies found fewer annual removals and markedly fewer interior removals under Trump than under Obama, with Trump-era interior removals averaging far below Obama’s figures — a key reason empirical counts often show higher deportation rates during Obama by several metrics ^{[2] [7]}.

6. Limits, disputes and why raw totals can mislead

Total counts across presidencies can be conflated with voluntary returns, different fiscal-year cutoffs, and evolving data collection; some outlets report very large eight‑year totals for past presidents that include returns (claims that Clinton “expelled” millions, for example), underscoring that cross-era comparisons require careful metric selection and transparency about what’s being counted ^{[10] [6]}. Where sources disagree or provide different aggregations, reporting has tended to reflect the institutional or political lens of the publisher — libertarian think tanks emphasize rates and historical comparison ^[1], advocacy and academic pieces stress priorities and interior vs border distinctions ^{[8] [7]}.

Conclusion — direct answer

Yes: using commonly cited measures — annual formal removals, interior removals, and removals as a percentage of the estimated unauthorized population — deportation activity was higher under Obama than under Trump, especially early in Obama’s presidency and in the 2012 peak; nevertheless, this conclusion depends on the metric chosen (removal vs return, interior vs border) and the policy context that shaped who was targeted ^{[1] [2] [3]}.