How many immigrants were deported under Joe Biden

1. What the headline numbers mean: removals vs. expulsions vs. repatriations

Government and policy sources use three overlapping but different concepts: removals (formal deportations), expulsions or returns at the border (often carried out under public‑health orders such as Title 42), and voluntary returns or “repatriations” that include people turned away at ports of entry or accepted by Mexico; combining those categories yields the largest totals attributed to the Biden years (often labeled “repatriations”)—about 4.4 million in one prominent Migration Policy Institute consolidation and about 4.7 million in other press summaries ^[1][2].

2. The narrower official deportation/removal totals during Biden’s term

When restricted to removals recorded by DHS/ICE, reporting shows spikes in specific fiscal years rather than a uniform mass deportation: ICE and news outlets reported roughly 271,000–272,000 removals in FY2024, a decade high and larger than comparable Trump years by at least some measures ^[3][4][5]. Different analysts also highlight annual totals in the mid‑hundreds of thousands—Migration Policy noted 778,000 “total repatriations” in FY2024 when counting broader categories ^[6].

3. The Title 42 and border‑expulsion effect that inflates cumulative totals

A key driver of the multimillion repatriation totals is the pandemic‑era Title 42 expulsions and other border denials between March 2020 and May 2023: MPI and other summaries count roughly 3 million expulsions during that period, the bulk occurring under Biden, which—when added to removals and returns—produces the roughly 4.4–4.7 million figure ^[1][2]. Those expulsions are administratively different from formal removals and do not always produce a removal order that bars reentry.

4. Why different outlets give different headline figures

Journalists and analysts emphasize different metrics: BBC, The Guardian and others highlighted the roughly 270,000 deportations in a recent 12‑month period as a decade high for removals ^[7][5], while think tanks and aggregated reporting emphasize the larger “repatriation” sum that combines expulsions, returns, and removals to portray Biden as responsible for more returns than recent presidents ^[1][2]. Databases such as TRAC also show divergent series because DHS publishes cumulative semi‑monthly removal figures that require careful subtraction to isolate presidential periods—leading to contested interpretations over which numbers reflect Biden’s actions versus the tail of prior policies ^[4].

5. How Biden’s record compares to Trump and Obama depends on the metric

On formal removals, Biden’s later fiscal years outpaced prior years—FY2024 removals were reported near the 270k–280k range, surpassing Trump’s single‑year figures in some comparisons ^[3][5]; but if counting only ICE interior enforcement or removals from the U.S. interior, Biden’s total in some years was lower than prior administrations, and critics point to voluntary returns and expulsions as masking differences in enforcement priorities ^[8][6]. Migration Policy and other analysts stress that combining expulsions and returns produces Biden administration totals higher than any single recent presidential term ^[1][2].

6. Bottom line and reporting caveats

Answering “how many immigrants were deported under Joe Biden” requires specifying the measure: strict formal removals in a recent peak year were roughly 270,000–280,000 ^[3][4], while cumulative repatriations including Title 42 expulsions and voluntary returns reached roughly 4.4–4.7 million by late 2024–early 2025 in prominent analyses ^[1][2]. Public records and independent trackers differ in methodology and time windows, and some agency releases are cumulative or semi‑monthly in ways that have produced disputed subtraction errors—so any single “deported under Biden” number must be qualified by the underlying definition ^[4].