How did migrant detention conditions change between the Obama and Trump administrations?

1. Enforcement priorities and who got locked up

The clearest administrative shift was doctrinal: Obama’s enforcement memos emphasized prosecutorial discretion and prioritized recent border crossers, serious criminals and national security threats, creating space for non-violent long-term residents to avoid detention, whereas Trump’s guidance removed many of those constraints and made almost any undocumented person a potential priority for arrest and detention ^{[1] [6]}. This policy recalibration enlarged the population subject to detention even if overall removal numbers varied by year, because the universe of people authorities sought to detain and remove expanded under Trump ^{[1] [7]}.

2. Family detention, family separation and “zero tolerance”

While the Obama era used family detention as a deterrent and faced litigation over prolonged family detention, the Trump administration implemented a formal “zero tolerance” policy that led to systematic family separations as a tool of deterrence and produced intense domestic and international backlash and court intervention ^{[2] [8]}. Scholars and advocates argue that the Trump approach represented a more punitive use of detention and separation as policy instruments than prior administrations had officially endorsed ^[8].

3. Population, capacity and crowding

Reporting by outlets cited by researchers documented a rise in the average daily detained population under Trump compared with typical Obama-era levels—Obama-era daily detained counts were often between roughly 30,000 and 40,000, while several Trump-period reports and compilations found higher average populations and added capacity demands that strained facilities ^[3]. That rise contributed to documented overcrowding and sanitation problems that became focal points for critics and litigation ^{[3] [9]}.

4. Conditions, medical care and deaths

Both administrations faced accusations of poor medical care and unsanitary conditions, but the Trump period saw particularly acute headlines, including the acknowledged death of a child in CBP custody after a long reported period without such deaths under Obama’s DHS leadership in later years; advocates and legal groups like the ACLU also challenged Trump-era policies such as bond restrictions and no-bond practices as coercive and harmful ^{[3] [5] [4]}. Independent reporting flagged similar patterns of neglect and insufficient healthcare under both presidencies even as the political framing differed ^[9].

5. Legal fights and public framing

Trump administration policies sparked numerous legal challenges—over family separation, no-bond rules, and expedited deportation expansions—and produced sharp public debate in which the administration sometimes defended conditions and even claimed they were “better than under Obama,” a claim contested by journalists, courts, and civil-rights groups ^{[4] [5]}. Meanwhile, defenders of continuity pointed out that detention and removals have long been tools of multiple administrations, complicating simple “worse” or “better” narratives ^{[9] [10]}.

6. Bottom line and limits of the record

The bottom line: the Obama administration emphasized prioritized enforcement and used family detention while achieving high aggregate removals; the Trump administration widened priorities, increased detention pressure and used separation and expedited processes as enforcement levers, producing higher detained populations, more legal battles over due process and acute reports of crowding and mistreatment ^{[1] [3] [2]}. Reporting and advocacy documents differ on attribution and degree—some of the facility problems predate Trump, and data on removals versus detentions complicate comparisons—so conclusions depend on whether the metric is removals, detained population, legal policy, or human-rights outcomes ^{[7] [11]}.