How did Obama administration enforcement priorities (Secure Communities, PEP, DACA) affect who was targeted for removal and the number of returns?
Executive summary
The Obama administration shifted enforcement toward biometric-driven identification of criminal and recent entrants under Secure Communities and later PEP, while DACA created a protected class of long-term, low-risk “Dreamers,” producing a net pattern of more formal removals of criminal or recent crossers, fewer interior removals of settled noncriminals, and changes in returns dynamics at the border and interior [1] [2] [3]. Those policy choices both concentrated enforcement resources on particular groups and altered how removals were counted and carried out, helping explain why raw removal totals remained high even as the composition of who was targeted changed [4] [5].
1. Secure Communities: biometrics, local jails and a widening net
Secure Communities expanded the use of fingerprint-sharing between local jails and federal immigration databases, producing large numbers of criminal-justice referrals to ICE and leading to many deportations of people with criminal convictions as well as those with minor or no criminal histories who nevertheless cycled through the criminal system [6] [3]. DHS touted record removals in 2010 as Secure Communities scaled from 14 to hundreds of jurisdictions and helped drive unprecedented numbers of criminal alien removals—evidence the program materially changed who encountered federal immigration enforcement [6]. Critics warned and documented that the program swept up people with minor offenses or tenuous convictions, producing deportations that critics argue were not tightly tied to public-safety threats [3].
2. PEP and the 2014 priorities memo: narrowing interior focus, shifting the flows
Facing the political and practical limits of deporting millions, the administration replaced Secure Communities with the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP) and issued November 2014 guidance prioritizing national-security threats, serious criminals, and recent border crossers, with the explicit intent of reducing interior removals of long-settled, low-risk individuals [2] [5]. Analysts projected the 2014 guidance, if followed, would reduce annual interior removals by roughly 25,000 and make interior removals fall below 100,000, a shift borne out by declines in ICE interior arrests and removals after 2014 [5] [4]. At the same time, DHS continued to prioritize border removals, so reductions in interior removals could be offset by continued or increased returns at the border—a redistribution rather than a simple overall decline [5].
3. DACA: creating protected cohorts and altering prosecutorial discretion
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program sheltered qualifying Dreamers from removal and thus carved out a visible, administrable exception to enforcement for a subset of unauthorized immigrants with long-term community ties, academic/work records, and clean backgrounds, changing who was exposed to removal risk [3] [7]. DACA’s selective protections meant enforcement resources could be concentrated elsewhere—principally on criminals and recent entrants—so the presence of DACA altered the pool of removable individuals and the optics of enforcement even as total removals remained large [3].
4. Numbers and composition: more formal removals, lower recidivism, shifting counts
The administration moved many people from voluntary returns to formal removals—a shift that increases the legal consequence and was associated with lower recidivism at the border (recidivism fell from 29% in FY2007 to 14% in FY2014; voluntary returns recidivism 31% vs formal removals 18%)—which helps explain both persistent high removal counts and reduced repeat crossings [1]. Overall removals under Obama totaled in the millions, but analysts emphasize the composition changed: a rising share of interior removals involved those with criminal convictions while interior noncriminal removals fell after the 2014 memo [1] [4].
5. Tradeoffs, critiques and political framing
Supporters argued the recalibration was pragmatic—concentrating finite resources on serious threats and recent crossers—while critics charged that programs like Secure Communities produced unfair deportations of low-level offenders and that the administration prioritized speed over individualized due process for many removals [6] [8]. The administration’s own fact sheets framed the 2014 actions as focusing on felons and recent entrants to preserve public safety, but civil-rights advocates and some local officials exposed the program’s collateral effects and due-process concerns, revealing competing agendas between enforcement efficiency and community protection [9] [8].