How many did Biden deport?
Executive summary
The short answer: formal removals (what DHS labels “deportations”) during President Biden’s last full fiscal year are reported at roughly 271,000–272,000; when broader categories — expulsions, voluntary returns at the border, and Title 42 expulsions — are included the totals cited by different outlets rise into the high hundreds of thousands and even millions (notably ~685,000 reported for FY2024 and ~3 million Title 42 expulsions from 2020–2023) [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. Formal removals — the narrowly defined “deportations” that DHS reports
The most consistent, repeatedly cited figure for formal removals under Biden’s most recent reporting is roughly 271,000–272,000 removals in fiscal year 2024; TRAC and other analyses extract that ICE/DHS removals total and calculate an average near 742 removals per day for FY2024 [1] [2].
2. Border expulsions and “returns” — why the totals jump when categories broaden
When counting expulsions and returns at the border rather than only formal interior removals, totals rise sharply: Migration Policy and other analysts note roughly 3 million expulsions under the pandemic-era Title 42 policy from March 2020 to May 2023 — a large share of which occurred during the Biden years — and reporting that combines returns, expulsions and removals produces much larger cumulative figures [4].
3. A competing total: high-end tallies and journalists’ summaries
Some outlets and trend pieces summarize Biden-era enforcement by combining removals, returns and expulsions into single tallies, producing higher totals such as roughly 685,000 “deportations” in FY2024 cited in reporting that distinguishes overall repatriations from DHS’s narrower “removals” series; those broader totals reflect different categories of enforcement and diplomatic returns, not only ICE removals from U.S. interior custody [3].
4. Why sources disagree — definitional differences and reporting gaps
Disagreement across sources is largely definitional: DHS/ICE “removals” are formal deportation orders executed by the agency, while “returns,” “expulsions” and Title 42 actions are administrative or immediate-border processes recorded on different dashboards; analysts and news organizations often mix these categories when comparing presidencies, producing divergent headline numbers [4] [1]. TRAC and other watchdogs also flag that administrations emphasize different enforcement priorities and publish data with varying latency and transparency, complicating direct comparisons [5] [2].
5. Political framing and the weaponization of counts
Numbers have been repeatedly used as political ammunition: rival administrations and advocates cherry-pick totals that best support their narratives — one side emphasizing the larger combined repatriation figures, the other stressing daily averages or formal interior removals to argue enforcement is lower or higher — and watchdog reporting shows both selective publicizing of raids and the concealment or delayed release of underlying datasets can skew public perception [5] [2] [6].
6. Bottom line answer, concisely stated
If the question is strictly “How many did Biden deport?” the best-supported, narrowly defined answer from DHS/ICE removals is about 271,000–272,000 formal removals in FY2024; if the question intends every person sent back under any authority during the Biden era — including Title 42 expulsions and voluntary returns at the border — the cumulative counts reported by analysts range much higher (hundreds of thousands in a single fiscal year and several million across the multi‑year Title 42 period) [1] [2] [3] [4].