DHS deportation numbers under each president
Executive summary
Official and secondary reporting shows wide variation in how “deportations” are counted across administrations: Barack Obama is commonly credited with roughly 3 million removals over two terms (a longstanding DHS-era total) [1], Joe Biden’s last full fiscal year recorded about 778,000 DHS removals (October 2023–September 2024) [2], and the Trump administrations—both his first term and his return in 2025—are described with different totals depending on metric and source [1] [3] [4]. Contemporary DHS press releases under Trump 2025–26 tout hundreds of thousands of “deportations” plus millions of so-called self-deportations, but independent analysts and fact-checkers warn the data are incomplete and not directly comparable to prior years [3] [2] [5].
1. Historical totals and the tricky vocabulary of removals
Longstanding compilations attribute about 3 million formal removals to President Obama during his eight years in office, a figure cited by regional fact briefers and historical yearbooks that use DHS definitions of “removals” [1] [6], while academic and policy researchers note that counting rules have shifted over time—border returns, interior removals, voluntary returns and “self-deportations” are distinguished differently in DHS datasets—making raw comparisons across presidencies fraught [7] [6].
2. The Biden years: a high recent baseline
Independent coverage of deportation activity during Biden’s term notes that DHS reported roughly 778,000 removals in the last full fiscal year before 2025 (October 2023–September 2024), a figure that includes both individuals removed at the border and those removed from the interior and that sets a recent high-water mark for annual removals under a Democratic administration [2].
3. Trump (first term) and comparative context
Comparative analyses compiled by fact-checkers and migration scholars show Republican and Democratic presidents have different multi-decade removal averages—Cato’s historical review reports Democratic presidents removed an average of about 246,006 people per year from 1990–2018 versus 205,453 per year for Republican presidents—illustrating how political priorities and legal frameworks shape enforcement over time rather than a single administration’s politics alone [7]. Factchequeado’s reporting and historical tables further underline that Obama’s total remains the largest aggregate in recent decades, though differences in counting persist [8] [1].
4. Trump 2025–26: DHS claims, independent scrutiny, and what’s missing
DHS press releases under President Trump’s 2025 administration have repeatedly announced large figures—reports of more than 400,000, 527,000, 605,000, 622,000 and even 675,000 deportations at different moments, coupled with estimates of 1.6–2.2 million “self-deportations” or voluntary departures—claims spread across multiple internal DHS statements [9] [10] [3] [4] [11]. Independent fact-checkers and reporting voice skepticism about direct comparability and note DHS has not released underlying datasets in the same way previous administrations did, making it difficult to reconcile those counts with historical removals or to separate formal removals from voluntary returns or survey-based estimates cited by DHS [2] [5].
5. Why counts differ and how to read them
Counts vary because agencies report different actions—“removals” (formal orders), “returns” (border encounters returned without an order), “voluntary departures” and self-reported departures derived from surveys or administrative signals—and because data releases, scope (fiscal year vs. calendar year), and methodologies change between administrations, a point repeatedly emphasized in migration-policy analysis and media fact-checking [12] [2] [6]. Analysts warn that headline DHS press-release totals often bundle categories or rely on external estimates, so they must be treated as policy messages as well as statistics [5] [12].
6. Bottom line
A straight numerical ranking depends on definitions: Obama’s two-term aggregate is widely cited at roughly 3 million removals [1], Biden’s most recent full fiscal-year removals were about 778,000 [2], and Trump’s 2025 DHS releases claim several hundred thousand formal deportations plus millions of voluntary departures—but those later figures come with significant caveats and limited public documentation, so independent comparison is constrained [3] [4] [2]. Analysts and watchdogs explicitly caution readers that differing counting rules and incomplete data disclosure mean “who deported more” remains a nuanced question, not a settled number [2] [7].