What categories (criminal vs noncriminal) made up deportations under Obama and Trump?
Executive summary
Obama’s deportation practice emphasized prioritized categories — by 2016, enforcement focused on “priority” cases such as national‑security threats, people convicted of serious crimes, and recent border crossers — and many analyses count roughly 5.3 million removals across his two terms (sources summarize 5.3–5.7 million depending on method) [1] [2]. By contrast, Trump’s stated policy removed prioritization, treating virtually all undocumented immigrants as subject to removal and carrying out mass enforcement actions; reporting shows his administrations reduced the emphasis on criminal‑only targets and increased broad interior arrests and detentions [3] [4].
1. Obama’s policy: “priorities” and criminal focus
The Obama administration institutionalized enforcement priorities that steered removals toward national security threats, those convicted of serious crimes, and recent border crossers; by 2016 observers report that “94% of deportees were in priority categories,” reflecting a clear tilt toward criminal or national‑security cases rather than blanket interior enforcement [2]. Multiple outlets describe Obama as having the highest total removals over two terms, with mainstream tallies citing roughly 5.3 million formal removals across eight years — figures that underpin the label “deporter‑in‑chief” used by critics and scholars [1] [2].
2. Trump’s approach: elimination of prioritization and broader targets
The Trump administration’s enforcement memos explicitly rejected limits on who could be pursued, framing prosecutorial discretion as not constraining ICE agents and removing the protective cutoffs that had narrowed targets under Obama; advocates warn this effectively made all undocumented people possible targets for apprehension, detention and removal [3]. Reporting on Trump’s later term likewise documents large coordinated raids, expanded local cooperation and interior arrests that included many people without criminal records — outlets note that in some recent months a high share of detained migrants had no criminal records [4] [5].
3. Numbers versus categories: separate but related debates
Counting total removals and assessing who was targeted are different questions. Several sources show Obama oversaw larger cumulative removal totals across two terms than Trump did in his first term, while also emphasizing prioritization toward criminal categories [1] [2]. By contrast, Trump’s rhetoric and policy changes sought to dismantle those priorities and broaden enforcement even if some months’ raw removal totals did not always eclipse Obama’s peak years [3] [6].
4. What the data and analysts say about non‑criminals
Multiple recent reports from 2024–2025 highlight rising detention numbers and note that a substantial share of people arrested and detained under intensified enforcement lacked criminal convictions — outlets report figures like “8 out of 10” detainees without criminal records in some datasets and cite ICE detention spikes above 60,000 people in 2025 [4] [5]. Those accounts tie directly to policy shifts under Trump that rolled back Obama‑era prioritization and expanded interior enforcement and local‑law‑enforcement partnerships [4] [3].
5. Disagreement in sources and limits of public data
Counts of “deportations” or “removals” vary across outlets and depend on DHS definitions and the period covered; one compilation gives 5.3 million for Obama while others cite different totals [1] [2]. Several reports caution that public DHS/ICE data are fragmented, that administration claims (of totals or targets) are sometimes hard to verify independently, and that mixing voluntary returns, Title 42 expulsions, and formal removals can inflate comparisons [7] [2]. Available sources do not mention a single harmonized official dataset that cleanly separates criminal vs non‑criminal deportations across the two presidencies in a directly comparable way [1] [2].
6. Bottom line for readers
Factually: Obama’s enforcement emphasized and largely achieved a prioritization that concentrated removals on people with criminal convictions and national‑security concerns, while several analyses show larger cumulative removals across his two terms [2] [1]. Factually: Trump’s policies removed those limits, expanding who was considered removable and increasing interior arrests and detentions that included many non‑criminals, even as raw monthly and yearly totals vary across reports and time periods [3] [4]. The interpretation depends on whether one compares total removals, annual/daily rates, or the share of removals that were people with criminal records — and available reporting documents disagreement and data limitations on all those counts [1] [2].