Did Obama have a higher rate of deportations without due process compared to Donald Trump

1. Obama: higher absolute removals and a large share done outside immigration courts

Multiple analyses and DHS-derived tallies show the Obama administration conducted more removals over his two terms than recent presidents, with peak years averaging more than 1,000 removals per day in his first term and overall totals often cited in the millions across formal removals and returns ^{[1] [5]}. Fact-checkers and legal researchers documented that a substantial majority of those removals were executed without a hearing before an immigration judge — estimates spanning roughly 58% to 84% in individual years and averaging about 74% for the administration — a pattern tied to expedited “returns” and administrative removals rather than full court proceedings ^[2].

2. Trump: fewer removals by the numbers, but aggressive expedited procedures and legal fights

Briefings and congressional documents show the Trump administration did not match Obama’s peak annual removal totals — at least through reported years, Trump had not deported more than roughly 260,000 people in a single year as of earlier reporting and his later 2025 operations, while numerically large in short bursts, still lagged Obama’s record years in some measures ^{[3] [1]}. At the same time, the second Trump administration introduced fast-track expulsions and invoked tools such as the Alien Enemies Act and other rapid-removal mechanisms that critics and courts said curtailed procedural protections; federal judges blocked parts of those programs on due-process grounds ^[4].

3. Apples-to-apples comparison is limited by differing metrics and incomplete public data

The central question asks about a “rate of deportations without due process,” but the public record compiled in the cited reporting provides clear percentages for Obama-era removals without hearings ^[2] and robust counts of total removals for both presidents ^{[1] [3]}, while failing to produce a directly comparable, administration-wide percentage metric for Trump’s removals performed outside immigration-judge proceedings in the sources provided. That gap means one can reliably say Obama had a higher absolute number and a documented high share of removals without hearings, but cannot strictly quantify whether the percentage rate under Trump was higher or lower based on these sources alone ^{[2] [3]}.

4. Context and divergent practices matter as much as raw percentages

Beyond the topline figures, the two administrations deployed different tools: Obama’s large totals reflected years of formal removals plus many administrative returns and prioritization memos that shaped who was prosecuted, while Trump emphasized universal enforcement and introduced rapid expulsions and transfers that critics say bypassed safeguards; those qualitative differences shaped public perception and legal scrutiny as much as raw counts ^{[1] [6] [4]}. Advocates argue Obama’s system institutionalized high-volume removals within bureaucratic rules, whereas critics of Trump point to novel expedited pathways and documented instances of mistaken or extrajudicial removals as evidence of more acute due‑process violations, though the latter are documented as legal controversies rather than as a clean statistical rate in the material reviewed ^{[4] [6]}.

5. Bottom line and reporting limits

Based on the assembled reporting, Obama presided over more removals in absolute terms and there is clear, cited analysis showing a large share of those removals occurred without an immigration-judge hearing ^{[1] [2]}. Trump’s administrations appear to have deported fewer people annually in the data cited here but instituted expedited programs and practices that caused significant due‑process concerns and court intervention; the sources provided do not supply a definitive, comparable percentage of Trump-era removals conducted without hearings, so a definitive numeric “higher rate” claim cannot be supported from these materials alone ^{[3] [4]}.