As tensions remain around President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts, to deliver mass deportations, comparisons are being made between the Republican’s record and that of former Democratic President Barack Obama.
Nicknamed the “Deporter in Chief,” Obama deported millions of immigrants during his two terms, but that did not stop Trump from campaigning on border security back in 2016.
This week, Vice President JD Vance waded into a debate around the numbers and the significant pushback against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Trump’s second term, suggesting that the numbers were wrong, as others on social media argued that no violence broke out in response to Obama’s efforts.
“In the Obama administration, they counted being turned away at the border as a deportation. A person would show up, be sent back, and counted as a deportation,” Vance posted on X Wednesday. “We have to do deportations from the interior of the country because Biden and Harris let them walk in.”
Trump returned to office on the promise of delivering millions of deportations. That was a promise that galvanized his base after years of surges at the U.S.-Mexico border, but it also set him up for significant scrutiny when agencies like ICE had been vastly underfunded.
What Does the Data Show?
Over Obama’s two terms in office, 5.3 million immigrants in total were deported or repatriated from the U.S.
During Trump’s first term, the administration oversaw the removal of 2,001,280 people. Numbers then jumped significantly during Biden’s term, reaching 4,677,460 at last count in July 2024.
During their first years in office, Obama saw 873,937 immigrant removals, Trump 387,340, and Biden 1.3 million.
“The Obama administration had a high number of internal deportations early in his first term. This was largely due to the Secure Communities program, instituted at the end of the George W. Bush administration,” Jeremy Beck, co-president of immigration think tank NumbersUSA, told Newsweek.
“Under Secure Communities’ information sharing program, unlawfully present aliens in local jails were flagged, giving federal immigration authorities the opportunity to arrange for a removal. It was safe, efficient, and effective. Too effective for some.”
Obama scaled back the Secure Communities program, replacing it with the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP) in 2014, which limited enforcement efforts to national security threats and priority removals.
At the tail end of Trump’s first term and through much of Biden’s, there was a surge in illegal crossings at the southwest border, prompting a large number of turn-aways by the Border Patrol, which can be recorded as removals.
This is where determining data and announcements becomes difficult.
During the early days of the second Trump administration, ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shared regular data on social media around removals carried out by ICE, stating the numbers did not include those from the border, and claiming the Biden administration had “cooked the books,” making its data unreliable.
DHS, however, stopped publishing in-depth monthly data until one year ago, January 16, 2025, making it difficult to directly compare numbers or to understand the unfolding trends under Trump.
The non-partisan Migration Policy Institute (MPI) issued a report Tuesday, which said that while arrests of immigrants and ICE detention had soared over the past 12 months, it did not appear that the Trump administration was on track to hit its 1 million deportations per year target.
“The administration’s singular focus on arrests and deportations has resulted in shock and awe, but the results of its enforcement have remained uneven,” MPI wrote.
In December, ICE said it had removed 622,000 noncitizens from the U.S., compared to Biden’s 778,000 in Fiscal Year 2024. That includes those deported from the border or at airports, MPI suggested. The Trump administration has also said that upward of 2 million immigrants have left the U.S. over the past year.
It remains unclear whether those were regular departures as visas expired, self-deportations via the CBP Home app, or other methods, again because detailed data is not being published.
“Because the Trump administration chocked off crucial deportation data from the Office of Homeland Security Statistics (OHSS) and failed to provide evidence of its inflated deportation claims, the public has no way of knowing how many people the Trump administration has deported,” Austin Kocher, an immigration professor at Syracuse University, told Newsweek.
He said that ICE reports showed that the agency deported about 320,00 people in FY 2025, up from 250,000 in FY 2024. Then the Trump administration made the 600k claim, without evidence or explanation.
“As a result of this administration’s lack of transparency, we are unable to meaningfully compare deportations under this administration to past administrations,” Kocher said.
When asked for a breakdown of deportation data, DHS provided only a link to its December 10, 2025, press release, which stated the headline figure of 622,000.
Were There Anti-ICE Protests Under Obama?
Aside from the questions over the numbers, the other aspect of the current debate is the response to how the Trump administration has enforced immigration law.
Opponents, including many Democrats, have railed against ICE’s tactics, which have, at times, appeared aggressive and even violent. Possibly the prime example of the clashes is the death of Renee Good in Minneapolis just over a week ago.
A U.S. citizen, Good’s death at the hands of a federal agent prompted widespread protests, which have added to the number of rallies from those opposed to ICE’s actions overall since January 2025.
While it may appear that there have only been anti-ICE protests over the past year, and between 2017 and 2021, the reality is that there have long been protests and rallies against the actions of immigration enforcement agencies.
Reports from the Obama era show protests over what were seen as unfair, speedy deportations. There were also marches calling for long-term immigration reform.
The Border Patrol specifically was criticized for its perceived brutality by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), while Democrats in Congress spoke of their outrage in early 2016 that ICE agents had been terrorizing immigrant communities.
Analysis of the 2009-2017 Obama era showed a mixed response to the Democrat’s policies and methods for cracking down on illegal immigration.
While headline policies like DACA, giving status to those who were the children of undocumented immigrants, are well remembered, Obama’s DHS was carrying out workplace raids and prosecuting companies for taking on staff who were not legally allowed to work.
The DHS of 2009-2017 also sought to speed up decisions on immigration cases and the removal of those who posed a national security risk, often using only one agent as the decision-maker, prompting backlash from immigration advocacy groups, something that may sound familiar today.
Beck told Newsweek that the Obama administration’s aim at the time was to show voters the government could tackle illegal immigration without drastically impacting immigrants without legal status who had not committed crimes.
What was not as common was the use of force toward immigrants by federal agents. Cases were recorded, prompting lawsuits, but operations were not as sweeping as those of the current Trump administration.
Even during the first Trump administration, large-scale operations like those seen in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minnesota were not a fixture. The focus, instead, was on the border, building the wall and detaining illegal immigrants.
Again, protests took place, but the reaction in 2025 through early 2026 is largely down to the change in tactics to send more armed agents into the field to detain illegal immigrants, who are not always, as DHS claims, the “worst of the worst.”
“In light of today’s debate over interior enforcement, it is worth remembering that for a few years, the United States had an incredibly effective and safe enforcement policy with Secure Communities under which ICE could operate in collaboration with local jails,” Beck said. “Sanctuary policies, on the other hand, drive ICE operations into the streets. Broader cooperation between states and the feds, access to jails, and a mandatory E-Verify program would be a welcome development.”
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