How do interior ICE removals (non-border) compare between the Biden and Trump administrations once apples-to-apples categories are used?
Executive summary
When compared apples-to-apples — isolating interior removals (deportations that originate from inside the United States, not border returns or expulsions) — the evidence shows a genuine shift in emphasis under the second Trump administration toward interior enforcement: more arrests inside the U.S., more detention capacity devoted to interior cases, and faster movement from detention to removal (Deportation Data Project) [1]. Yet the headline totals are muddied by mixed counting conventions (removals vs. returns, border vs. interior), disputed agency rollups, and independent analyses that find Trump’s interior removals may not exceed Biden’s on a sustained daily basis once fiscal-year overlaps and cumulative reporting are corrected (TRAC; Migration Policy) [2] [3].
1. Apples-to-apples means stripping out border returns and Title 42 expulsions
A clean comparison requires focusing on “interior removals” — non-border deportations that depend on ICE locating and apprehending people in U.S. communities — because many of Biden’s high total deportation numbers were composed of returns and border expulsions that do not involve interior ICE operations (Migration Policy) [3]. Multiple commentators and analysts warn that DHS and ICE reporting mixes removals and returns and that the Trump White House has not consistently published granular breakdowns, making simple headline comparisons unreliable (Migration Policy; MigrationPolicy article on Trump 2.0; [3]; [8]2).
2. Trump 2.0 reoriented resources to the interior and increased detention-to-removal throughput
Independent researchers documenting the first year of the second Trump administration show ICE increased interior enforcement by detaining many more people arrested in the interior, roughly tripling detention bed usage for interior enforcement and raising the probability of removal within 60 days from 55% to about 69% — changes that materially increased interior removals following arrests (Deportation Data Project) [1]. These operational choices — redeploying beds freed by lower border arrivals, detaining more and releasing fewer — are central to why interior deportations rose as an enforcement outcome [1].
3. Counts diverge: agency claims, TRAC adjustments, and partisan analyses
ICE and White House messaging touted large removal totals under Trump, and some outlets cited figures like roughly 230,000 interior removals since Trump’s return (CIS commentary on NYT reporting), while TRAC’s careful fiscal-year subtraction of cumulative series concludes that Trump’s actual removals through certain periods were lower than headline claims and, in some snapshots, 6–10% below Biden’s FY2024 daily removal rate (CIS; TRAC) [4] [2] [5]. Migration Policy and other neutral observers emphasize that inconsistent public reporting and blended categories (returns, border expulsions, interior removals) are the key reason analyses reach different conclusions [3] [6].
4. Who was being removed changed — and that matters politically and legally
Beyond counts, the composition of interior removals shifted: several nonpartisan and partisan analyses find Trump broadened who could be targeted — instructing ICE to pursue a wider universe of undocumented people rather than chiefly those with criminal records — while other analysts (including CIS) claim a larger share of Trump-era interior removals had criminal convictions (CFR; CIS) [7] [8]. Independent reporting finds an increasing share of detained individuals had no criminal convictions under Trump even as the agency arrested more inside the U.S., a tension that explains contradictory narratives about whether removals focused on the “worst of the worst” (TRAC; Deportation Data Project; Migration Policy) [9] [1] [6].
5. Bottom line: Trump increased interior enforcement capacity and throughput, but net superiority on removals is contested
Factually, the Trump administration redirected resources to interior enforcement — more arrests inside the U.S., more detention beds for interior cases, and a higher removal rate once detained — producing a visible uptick in interior removals in many internal tallies [1]. However, when analysts reallocate cumulative fiscal reporting and strip out border returns/expulsions, independent reckoning by TRAC and others finds that Trump’s removals do not unambiguously outpace Biden’s FY2024 interior performance and that public claims from both sides can overstate or misclassify the category being touted [2] [5] [6]. The available sources therefore support two concurrent truths: operationally Trump amplified interior enforcement; analytically, the simple claim “Trump deported more inside the U.S. than Biden” depends heavily on which categories and accounting methods are used [1] [2] [3].