How have Title 42 expulsions and CBP Home 'self-deportation' programs been counted in administration deportation totals?
Executive summary
Title 42 “expulsions” have been tracked by CBP and publicly reported but are legally distinct from Title 8 deportations and removal orders; many official tallies present them separately even as some analysts and advocates aggregate them when assessing an administration’s overall border enforcement footprint [1] [2] [3]. Meanwhile, CBP’s post‑March 2020 encounter reporting merged Title 8 apprehensions and Title 42 expulsions for encounter and recidivism metrics, and policy changes after May 2023 shifted more people into Title 8 expedited removal and other removal channels that are counted as deportations by DHS and ICE [4] [5] [3].
1. What an “expulsion” vs. a “deportation” means on the books
Title 42 expulsions were implemented under public‑health authority and routinely removed people at the border without the immigration‑court removal orders that characterize Title 8 deportations; expulsions typically did not generate a formal order of removal even though CBP recorded biometrics and the contact [2] [1]. That legal distinction matters for counting: expulsions are operationally reported by CBP as expulsions, whereas DHS/ICE removal statistics focus on removals and returned migrants under Title 8 authorities [1] [2].
2. How the government’s dashboards and statistics present the numbers
Starting in March FY2020 CBP began including both Title 8 apprehensions and Title 42 expulsions together in Border Patrol encounter statistics and recidivism calculations, which means encounter totals published by CBP after that point reflect both types of actions unless an analyst separates them [4]. CBP maintained a dedicated Title 8/Title 42 dashboard and published regular monthly updates on expulsions, though the agency noted changes to public reporting cadence — for example a notice that as of FY2024 that particular dashboard would no longer be updated and users should consult other pages for Title 8 statistics [6].
3. How administrations and analysts have added or separated the tallies
DHS and its components have generally treated Title 42 expulsions as a separate category from deportations/removals under immigration law; migration‑policy researchers and CBP press releases make that separation clear by calling expulsions “expulsions” and removals “deportations” or “removals” [1] [3]. Yet several think tanks and advocacy groups aggregate expulsions with removals when comparing enforcement across administrations: Migration Policy cites roughly 3 million expulsions under Title 42 between March 2020 and May 2023 alongside 1.1 million deportations since FY2021 to characterize total movement out of the country under both policies [3]. Immigrant‑rights groups also report large counts of expulsions attributed to the Biden administration (for example reporting 2.3 million expulsions between Feb 2021 and Mar 2023) to argue expulsions functionally constituted mass removals even absent formal deportation orders [7].
4. The post‑Title 42 period and “CBP One” / self‑deportation mechanics
When Title 42 ended, DHS shifted many encounters into Title 8 expedited removal and a set of new or reinstated administrative tools — including the Circumvention of Lawful Pathways rule and reliance on the CBP One scheduling system — that carry different legal consequences and are counted as removals or returns in DHS/ICE statistics [3] [8]. Migration Policy documents a spike in Title 8 expedited removals after the end of Title 42 (316,000 processed via expedited removal from May 2023–March 2024), which DHS/ICE count as removals under standard immigration authorities rather than expulsions [3].
5. Counting disputes, political frames, and data limits
Counting disagreements are partly semantic and partly technical: government sources separate expulsions and removals but sometimes merge them for encounter totals [4] [6], while advocates and watchdogs argue expulsions should be counted alongside deportations because they achieve the same real‑world effect of sending people out of the country [7] [2]. Analysts also warn that Title 42 expulsion totals include repeat encounters of the same individuals and that dashboards and definitions shifted over time, complicating apples‑to‑apples comparisons across years and administrations [5] [4].
6. Bottom line
Officially, Title 42 expulsions have been reported and tracked primarily by CBP as expulsions distinct from Title 8 deportations; after March 2020 CBP encounter totals mixed both types for operational metrics, and after Title 42 ended many removals moved into Title 8 expedited removal channels that DHS and ICE count as deportations — but outside observers frequently combine expulsions and deportations to assess total outbound enforcement, producing divergent totals and political narratives depending on which categories are aggregated [4] [3] [7].