How did Title 42 expulsions change ICE deportation and encounter statistics between 2020 and 2024?
Executive summary
Title 42 expulsions — a public‑health authority used from March 21, 2020, through May 11, 2023 — shifted large volumes of border encounters out of traditional immigration courts and into rapid expulsions, reducing ICE removals in FY2020 and changing how removals, returns and “deportations” were counted through 2024 [1] [2] [3]. When Title 42 ended, agencies reported a surge in encounters processed under Title 8 and a rapid ramp‑up of ICE removals and expedited actions, but interpreting year‑to‑year comparisons requires careful attention to differing categories and which agency performed the initial encounter [4] [5] [6].
1. How Title 42 depressed ICE removal totals in 2020–2021
When the CDC authority was transferred to CBP in March 2020, CBP used Title 42 to expel irregular crossers quickly, and ICE’s formal removals fell sharply in FY2020: ICE ERO recorded 185,884 removals in FY2020, a roughly 30 percent decline from FY2019, a drop ICE attributed in part to Title 42 expulsions that reduced CBP apprehensions subject to ICE removal processing [2] [1]. ICE also assisted CBP with Title 42 air charter expulsions — for example, reporting approximately 17,000 such charter expulsions in FY2020 — showing that expulsions occurred but often outside ICE’s formal “removal” bookkeeping [2] [1].
2. Numbers changed because categories changed — removals, returns, expulsions
Across 2020–2024 the statistics landscape was muddied by labels: migration analysts and media treat “removals” and “enforcement returns” as deportations while classifying administrative returns and Title 42 expulsions as repatriations, separating CBP expulsions from ICE removals [7] [6]. CBP maintained parallel dashboards for Title 8 and Title 42 actions and, through mid‑2024, flagged that Title 42 expulsions were a distinct category that ended in May 2023 — a distinction that shifts year‑to‑year totals depending on whether one aggregates CBP expulsions with ICE removals [3] [1].
3. ICE’s activity re‑focused rather than simply shrank
Even during Title 42, ICE continued interior arrests and removals but at different volumes and with different partners; ICE’s dashboards and reports for FY2024 show a recovery and increase in ICE‑conducted removals compared with pandemic lows, with quarterly reports noting roughly 68,000 removals in a single quarter of FY2024 [5] [8]. Migration Policy’s tally found 1.1 million deportations from FY2021 through Feb 2024 — a figure that mixes removal types and occurs alongside roughly 3 million Title 42 expulsions from March 2020–May 2023, demonstrating that expulsions produced very large repatriation counts that sit outside many ICE removal tallies [4].
4. After Title 42 ended: encounters, expedited removal, and agency handoffs
Once Title 42 ended in May 2023, CBP and DHS shifted many encounters into Title 8 processing and expedited removal, producing large numbers processed at the border; Migration Policy reports 316,000 migrants processed via expedited removal from May 2023–March 2024 and a record‑high administrative returns and removals cadence in FY2023–FY2024 [4]. Analysts and ICE’s own materials note that many people ICE later “deported” in 2024 were first encountered by CBP at the southwest border and transferred to ICE for removal flights or other logistics, emphasizing an operational handoff that affects which agency’s statistics register the act of departure [9] [5].
5. Interpreting trends: surge vs. reclassification and data limits
The apparent “ramp‑up” in deportations after Title 42’s end reflects both a genuine increase in ICE removals and a reclassification of many encounters that previously would have been expelled under Title 42 into Title 8 removal pathways and expedited processes; observers caution that aggregating CBP expulsions and ICE removals without noting definitions can produce misleading comparisons [4] [6]. Official OHSS and ICE datasets include notes that “removal book‑outs” can include Title 42 expulsions in some tables, and CBP’s decision to stop updating some dashboards after FY2024 further complicates trend analysis, so readers should treat cross‑year totals as dependent on evolving category definitions and inter‑agency roles [8] [3] [10].
6. Bottom line: Title 42 shifted where and how people were counted, not simply how many left
Between 2020 and 2024 Title 42 produced millions of rapid expulsions (about 3 million per Migration Policy) that reduced traditional ICE removal counts in the pandemic years and left a data legacy where spikes in later ICE removals reflect both post‑Title 42 policy changes and a large backlog of encounters reclassified under Title 8 and expedited removal; disentangling the policy effect from accounting changes requires combining CBP and ICE datasets and reading their methodological caveats carefully [4] [1] [5].