How did the Obama administration’s enforcement priorities (Morton memos, 2014 directives) shape deportation numbers?
Executive summary
The Morton memos (2010–2011) and the Obama administration’s November 2014 enforcement directives reoriented U.S. immigration enforcement away from mass interior removals toward a narrower set of priorities—recent border crossers, national‑security risks, and convicted serious criminals—which contributed to a measurable decline in removals after a peak in 2012, even as critics say the policies were unevenly applied and many removals still targeted low‑level cases [1] [2] [3].
1. The policy shift on paper: from broad sweeps to prosecutorial discretion
John Morton’s ICE memos in 2010–2011 formally introduced “prosecutorial discretion,” telling agents to prioritize threats to public safety and national security and to defer low‑priority cases, a doctrine that left discretionary latitude with field officers but signaled a change in emphasis from removing everyone to focusing on certain groups [4] [5] [1].
2. November 2014: codifying priorities and narrowing the pool
DHS’s November 2014 guidance under Secretary Jeh Johnson consolidated and tightened priorities across agencies, limiting routine interior removals to three main priority groups and explicitly narrowing who should face enforcement for purely immigration violations—an approach that Migration Policy Institute estimates would prioritize roughly 13 percent of the nation’s unauthorized population under that framework [6] [1].
3. The numbers: a peak, then a decline tied to new priorities
Annual removals rose during Obama’s first term and peaked around FY2012, but after the 2014 directives overall deportations fell—FY2013 saw roughly 368,644 removals and FY2014 about 315,943, with totals dropping further in subsequent years (reports show FY2015 and FY2016 declines, including a reported 235,413 removals in FY2015 and a sharp fall in interior removals by FY2016) consistent with a policy that deprioritized long‑settled noncriminals [7] [2] [8].
4. Mechanisms: how priorities translated into fewer repeat and interior removals
The administration emphasized formal removals (with lasting legal consequence) over voluntary returns and targeted recent crossers and recidivists, which reduced border recidivism and the number of interior removals—Migration Policy notes a drop in recidivism and a shift away from pursuing established community members without serious records [1].
5. Limits, leaks, and the reality on the ground: inconsistent application and continuing high removals
Despite the directives, FOIA analyses and investigative reports found that many deportations still involved traffic offenses, immigration violations, or minor infractions that ICE labeled “criminal,” and advocates argued Morton’s and later guidance were unevenly implemented—producing what some called record removals even as stated priorities changed (TRAC and New York Times analyses; American Immigration Council summaries) [3] [9] [10].
6. Competing narratives and institutional incentives
DHS and ICE defended the shift as necessary to protect public safety while preserving enforcement capacity; immigrant‑rights groups and some researchers countered that the enforcement apparatus (including Secure Communities until its November 2014 end) continued to funnel nonviolent people into removal processes and that performance metrics and local‑federal partnerships often created incentives to sustain high removal counts [10] [3] [1].
7. Bottom line: priorities reshaped who was removed more than whether removals happened at all
The Morton memos and the 2014 enforcement directives materially narrowed official enforcement priorities and coincided with a decline from the post‑2009 peak in removals—particularly interior and repeat removals—yet the reforms did not eliminate large numbers of deportations and were applied unevenly, producing both empirical reductions in specific categories and persistent controversy over whom the system continued to target [1] [2] [3].