How many people were turned away at the border under Obama?
Executive summary
The short answer: there is no single, universally cited tally in the provided reporting that isolates only the number of people “turned away at the border” (commonly logged as “returns”) during the Obama years; federal statistics and secondary analyses show roughly 3.0–3.1 million formal removals during 2009–2016 and, when combined with returns, a total that exceeds 5 million, implying roughly two million or more returns—but the exact returns-only figure is not given in the supplied sources [1] [2] [3].
1. What the government calls “turned away” — returns versus removals
The Department of Homeland Security and analysts draw an important distinction: a “removal” is a formal order expelling a noncitizen from the United States, whereas a “return” covers people moved out after withdrawing an admission request or a voluntary departure at the border — the latter is the category most closely tied to what the public means by “turned away at the border” [2] [1].
2. How many formal removals happened under Obama
DHS statistics for fiscal years 2009–2016, summarized by reporting and fact-checkers, show approximately 3.0–3.1 million formal removals during the Obama administration — a figure repeatedly cited in analyses that labeled Obama’s administration the era of the highest numeric removals in modern history [1] [4] [3].
3. Why many accounts aggregate removals and returns (and what that yields)
Several sources warn that counting only removals misses a large volume of border “returns”: when removals and returns are combined, totals published by analysts and fact-checkers push the Obama-era tally above five million people, a combined figure used by multiple outlets to compare administrations [1] [5]. The Migration Policy Institute and other commentators emphasize that policy shifts under Obama moved more apprehended border crossers into formal proceedings rather than informal returns, which changed the mix even as aggregate expulsions remained high [2].
4. Estimates and the arithmetic that points toward “turned away” numbers
Because the supplied sources give a concrete removals number (~3.1M) and state that the combined removals+returns exceed 5 million, a reasonable inference from those two facts is that returns (the category closest to “turned away at the border”) likely total roughly two million or more during 2009–2016; however, none of the provided documents publish a single authoritative “returns-only” count for the full Obama period in the supplied snippets, so that inference must be presented as derived rather than directly cited [1] [5].
5. Reporting disagreements and why they matter
Different organizations and reporters use different baselines: some emphasize DHS’s formal removals (~3.0–3.1M), others an American Immigration Council framing of “more than 2.7 million deportations” depending on definitions and fiscal-year cutoffs, and yet others combine removals and returns to produce totals above five million — these definitional choices drive political characterizations such as “deporter-in-chief” and shape whether one describes people as “turned away” versus “formally removed” [3] [4] [1].
6. Remaining limits in the available reporting and what would settle the question
The supplied reporting does not deliver a single, explicit DHS tabulation labeled “returns during FY2009–2016” in the snippets provided; to settle the question with precision would require consulting the DHS Yearbook of Immigration Statistics returns tables for each fiscal year of the Obama administration or Migration Policy Institute breakdowns that separately list returns across those years — documents referenced by these sources but not reproduced verbatim in the material supplied here [2] [5] [1].