How did the use and end of Title 42 affect deportation and expulsion totals during the Biden administration?
Executive summary
The Biden administration both relied on and defended Title 42 expulsions for much of its term, producing millions of rapid expulsions at the border, and after Title 42 ended in May 2023 the administration increased processing and deportation activity under ordinary immigration law — producing a post‑Title 42 rise in recorded deportations that, by some accounts, made 2024 the most active year since 2010 [1] [2] [3]. Advocates and human‑rights groups contend that reliance on Title 42 masked the underlying enforcement strategy and produced severe harms, while federal agencies point to a shift from Title 42 expulsions to Title 8 processing and ramped‑up removals [4] [5] [6].
1. What Title 42 did to totals: a mass expulsion tool that dwarfed normal deportations
Title 42, a CDC public‑health order first used in March 2020, was invoked to rapidly expel irregular border crossers rather than process them under ordinary immigration law, producing an enormous number of expulsions during the pandemic years — counted in the millions, with reporting that roughly 3 million migrants were expelled under Title 42 between March 2020 and May 2023 and other outlets citing more than 1 million expulsions at the US‑Mexico border during its early months [2] [7] [1]. Those expulsions are functionally distinct from deportations because they were summary removals without the typical Title 8 processes and asylum screenings, and the Biden administration continued to use and defend the policy even as critics questioned its public‑health rationale [1] [7].
2. Internal enforcement totals during Title 42: removals rose but did not match expulsions
While Title 42 expulsions dominated border totals, conventional deportations and ICE removals under Title 8 did continue and in some years rose relative to 2021; for example, federal officials reported 72,177 migrants removed in fiscal year 2022 who were not amenable to Title 42 expulsions, up from 59,011 in FY2021, though these figures remained far below the annual scale of Title 42 expulsions in the millions under pandemic authority [6]. Border‑processing shifts also produced a large “non‑detained” docket of migrants with pending court cases, complicating direct comparisons between expulsions, deportations, voluntary returns and other categories [6].
3. The end of Title 42 changed the accounting and enforcement posture
When the public‑health emergency ended in May 2023 and Title 42 was effectively terminated, agencies moved to reframe enforcement under Title 8 and other tools; several analyses report that in the year after Title 42 ended the Biden administration recorded deportations at levels higher than any year since 2010, reflecting both resumed Title 8 removals and diplomatic returns negotiated with other countries [3] [2]. Migration Policy and ICE materials indicate that the post‑Title 42 period saw a ramp‑up in deportation flights and use of standard removal authorities, meaning totals shifted from mass, rapid expulsions to more formal deportations and negotiated returns [2] [1].
4. Interpretations diverge: administration claims vs. advocates’ critique
The administration has argued that Title 42 was a necessary operational tool early on and that ending it required preparing to process far larger numbers under Title 8; some lawmakers cautioned of surges of tens of thousands of crossings per day if Title 42 were rescinded [8]. Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch and other advocates counter that Title 42 enabled human‑rights abuses — documenting thousands of kidnappings, extortion and violent attacks against expelled asylum seekers and warning that replacement rules have continued rapid removals under other justifications — and argue that the numerical shift post‑Title 42 did not eliminate harm, only changed its legal form [4] [9] [10].
5. What the numbers show and what they don’t: reading totals carefully
Raw totals tell a blunt story: Title 42 produced by far the largest category of border removals during 2020–May 2023, and after Title 42 ended the recorded number of deportations under ordinary law increased markedly — including diplomatic repatriations and charter flights — making some post‑Title 42 years the most active in over a decade [2] [1] [3]. Yet comparisons must recognize differing legal categories (expulsions vs. deportations), the growth of non‑detained court dockets, and contested counting methods; media and advocacy sources emphasize different harms and different metrics, so any headline about “more deportations” depends on which categories are being counted and which harms are being prioritized [6] [4].
Conclusion: a policy shift in form more than in force
The end of Title 42 shifted how removals were documented and carried out — from summary public‑health expulsions to Title 8 processing, negotiated returns, and a post‑Title 42 rise in formal deportations — but did not amount to a simple reduction in enforcement; instead it replaced one mass mechanism with a more conventional, and still aggressive, set of deportation and expulsion tools that remain highly contested by advocates and some courts [1] [2] [4].