What year in the US had the record highest number of deportations?
Executive summary
The single highest annual total of formal U.S. deportations (officially recorded as "removals") in recent history occurred in fiscal year 2013, when the Department of Homeland Security recorded 438,421 removals — a peak widely reported and analyzed in contemporary accounts [1] [2]. While enforcement totals have fluctuated since, and recent administrations have produced surges in related metrics (returns, expulsions, or repatriations), the 2013 FY removals number remains the documented one-year record in the DHS yearbook data available through 2019 [1] [2].
1. The headline record: FY2013 and the 438,421 removals
The oft-cited record year is fiscal 2013, when DHS data show 438,421 removals — a level that drew national attention and led analysts and advocacy groups to label the Obama administration as presiding over historically high removal totals [1]. Pew Research summarized DHS reporting that year as a “record” for the number of deportations, noting in addition that a large share of those removals were carried out without judicial hearings via expedited removal or reinstatements of prior orders [1].
2. What "deportation" means in the data: removals, returns, expulsions
The government distinguishes between removals (compulsory, ordered departures), returns (confirmed departures not based on an order), and other forms such as public-health expulsions; reporting practices and category definitions matter when comparing years and administrations because some years include large numbers of border returns or expulsions that sit outside traditional interior removals [2] [3]. Analysts caution that headline totals can mix these categories or emphasize different mixes of interior removals versus border returns, which affects apples‑to‑apples comparisons across time [3] [4].
3. Obama-era context: sustained high removals, concentrated early in his presidency
Scholars and policy shops note that removals were especially high in the early Obama years, averaging roughly 400,000 annual removals during that period, contributing to the FY2013 peak and to a multi‑year record that totaled into the millions across the administration [5] [6] [7]. That long stretch of elevated removals — including the FY2013 spike — has been debated politically and academically, with defenders pointing to enforcement of existing law and critics framing it as excessive interior enforcement [1] [6].
4. Recent surges and why they don’t automatically eclipse 2013
Recent years have produced their own dramatic numbers — for example, reporting in late 2024 and 2025 described very large counts of departures, increases in detentions, and unprecedented levels of returns or self‑deportations — but those totals often combine different mechanisms (returns, expulsions under public‑health authorities, voluntary self‑deportations) and therefore are not always strictly comparable to the FY2013 removals figure recorded in DHS yearbook tables [8] [9] [10]. Migration Policy Institute, BBC and other outlets stressed that recent upticks often reflect changes in process, prioritization and geographic scope rather than a single clean “record removals” number eclipsing FY2013 [4] [8].
5. Methodological limits and competing narratives
Public records hold DHS yearbook tables through 2019 and ICE reporting that continues to refine categories and legal stages; because agencies periodically revise counting methods and because some recent reporting emphasizes expulsions or repatriations rather than removals, direct comparisons across years require caution and transparent definition-matching [2] [3]. Some political statements and agency press releases claim “historic” or “record” totals for 2025 and late‑2024, but those claims mix removals with returns/self‑deportations and often serve policy narratives; the DHS yearbook removals figure for FY2013 remains the standard referenced documented annual high in the available official series up through 2019 [10] [2] [1].