How did changes in interior enforcement policies under Obama and Trump affect the composition (criminal vs. noncriminal) of deportations?
Executive summary
Interior-enforcement policy under Obama increasingly prioritized migrants with criminal convictions and recent border crossers, resulting in removals weighted toward those groups, while consciously deprioritizing many noncriminal immigrants; under Trump, enforcement guidance broadened to eliminate that hierarchy and treated a much wider set of noncitizens as removal priorities, shifting the composition of enforcement action toward a larger share of noncriminal arrests even if total annual removals sometimes remained lower than Obama-era peaks [1] [2] [3].
1. Obama’s prioritization narrowed who was targeted, changing the mix of removals
Beginning with the Morton memos and crystallizing in 2014 guidance, the Obama administration established a hierarchy that focused interior removals on national-security threats, those convicted of serious crimes, and recent border crossers, and explicitly deprioritized many noncriminal populations—an approach that concentrated deportations among criminal and recent-arrival cohorts and reduced interior removals of long‑term noncriminal residents [2] [1].
2. The result: higher removals but a clearer criminal focus
Multiple analyses and contemporary reporting show that the Obama years produced very high numbers of formal removals—higher than subsequent Trump years—and that policy and operational tools like Secure Communities fed a system that funneled criminal arrests into ICE removals, producing a deportation record characterized by a substantial criminal component [1] [3] [4].
3. Trump’s policy stripped away prioritization and broadened the pool for enforcement
The Trump administration’s executive orders removed the implicit hierarchy of priorities and gave ICE broader discretion to treat immigration violations, minor offenses and even conduct tied to immigration status as grounds for removal, while expanding programs that link local arrests to immigration enforcement (e.g., 287(g)), which in turn made it more likely that people without serious criminal histories would be arrested and processed for removal [2] [5].
4. How composition changed in practice: more noncriminals arrested, though totals vary
Observers and data compilations indicate a notable rise in detentions and arrests of people without criminal records under Trump-era enforcement—reports later in 2025 document record detention counts with large shares lacking criminal records—meaning the composition of enforcement activity shifted toward noncriminals even as annual removal totals did not necessarily exceed Obama-era peaks [3] [4].
5. Competing narratives and methodological limits—why numbers can mislead
Counting removals alone obscures composition: Obama’s years included very high removal counts driven by interior programs that targeted criminal cases, while Trump’s approach produced intense arrest activity and broader targeting that increased noncriminal detentions; studies and media pieces caution that differences in definitions (which offenses qualify as “criminal”), supervisory review practices, and data completeness make direct numeric comparisons fraught [2] [3] [1].
6. Bottom line and lingering uncertainties
The policy change is clear in intent and mechanism: Obama narrowed enforcement to prioritize criminals and recent crossers, producing a deportation profile weighted toward criminal cases, while Trump removed those guardrails and widened enforcement, resulting operationally in more noncriminal arrests and removals relative to prior prioritization—even when annual removal totals fluctuated—and analysts stress that differences in definitions, program expansion, and data quality limit precise quantification [2] [1] [3].