What were annual trends in removal classifications (expedited, reinstatement, formal removal) across the Obama administration fiscal years?

1. Overall volume: high removals, fewer returns

The Obama years were marked by historically high removal totals concentrated in the formal “removal” category rather than border returns; analysts report that formal removals under Obama outpaced those in the Bush and Clinton administrations even as overall returns declined ^[1], and DHS-era reporting and post‑hoc analyses counted roughly 1.8–2.0 million removals through the early-to-mid term years, with multi-year reporting putting removals in the hundreds of thousands per year on average ^{[3] [4]}.

2. Border removals and the rise of nonjudicial processes (expedited + reinstatement)

By the early 2010s the administration concentrated removal activity at the border, with reports showing roughly 70 percent of removals in FY2013 occurred at the border and that over the prior decade about 84 percent of border removals were carried out through nonjudicial processes—primarily expedited removal and reinstatement of prior orders—meaning a large and growing portion of removals bypassed immigration court proceedings ^[2].

3. Interior enforcement and formal removals: sustained use of court-ordered removals

Simultaneously, interior enforcement emphasized formal removals for targeted populations (notably criminals, prior removal orders, and recent crossers), and several sources document that the Obama administration averaged hundreds of thousands of formal removals annually—one analysis puts the average above roughly 343,700 formal removals per year across the administration’s span—so formal removals remained a major and steady pillar of overall enforcement ^{[4] [1]}.

4. Annual trend shape during the administration: early peaks, later targeting, and administrative shifts

The pattern across fiscal years shows higher interior removals early in the administration and continued high border removals by the mid‑decade: fiscal‑year aggregates peaked in certain years (for example FY2012 and FY2013 figures cited in contemporaneous reporting), while policy refinements and prioritization (targeting criminals and recent crossers, and moving toward administrative removal mechanisms) produced a plateau and redistribution of how removals occurred rather than a simple linear increase or decline ^{[3] [2] [5]}.

5. Why the mix shifted: policy, capacity, and practical logistics

The shift toward expedited and reinstatement removals at the border reflected both policy choices—redirecting resources to border operations and emphasizing quick outbound processing—and practical incentives, since nonjudicial procedures process large numbers quickly and were already dominant at the border, while interior enforcement relied on formal removals to satisfy enforcement priorities and legal process for cases identified through programs like Secure Communities and its successors ^{[2] [5] [6]}.

6. Caveats, competing readings, and what the numbers do not show

Different reporting frames and metrics matter: some counts combine removals and returns, others isolate formal removals, and immigration‑policy analysts warn that headline totals obscure the procedural mix (border nonjudicial vs. interior judicial) and the human impacts of processing choices; sources used here document the procedural shift and high formal-removal totals but do not permit a year‑by‑year table of every classification within this reply—those granular annual breakout tables reside in DHS yearbooks and the underlying MPI analyses cited ^{[1] [2] [5]}.

Conclusion

The Obama administration’s removal trends were defined less by an across‑the‑board rise or fall and more by a reallocation: a sustained high volume of formal removals interiorly coupled with growing reliance on expedited and reinstatement procedures at the border—so annual totals stayed large while the mix shifted toward nonjudicial border mechanisms and prioritized categories for interior formal removals ^{[1] [2] [4]}.