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By Billal Rahman and Dan Gooding
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During a hearing on mass deportations Tuesday, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham claimed that President-elect Donald Trump had deported more illegal immigrants during his first term in office than President Joe Biden has, appearing to contradict official government data.
The South Carolina senator was speaking in his authority as the minority chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was holding a hearing to discuss Trump's proposals to remove millions of illegal and undocumented migrants from the U.S.
During his opening remarks, Graham said Trump had deported similar numbers to his predecessor, President Barack Obama, but then "along comes Biden, it drops like a rock", as an aide held up a chart.
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"If we do not have outflow, the inflow will continue," Graham said.
Deportation became a key talking point during the presidential election campaign, with various figures on the numbers of illegal border crossings, undocumented migrant populations, and removals thrown around by Trump and other leading GOP voices.
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The Claim
Senator Graham said during Tuesday's hearing that the first Trump administration deported similar numbers to Obama and that numbers had dropped dramatically under Biden.
A chart held up behind Graham during his remarks showed at least 225,000 removals for the first three years of Trump's term (2017-2019), along with at least 185,000 in 2020. Under Biden's term, 2021 and 2022 showed fewer than 80,000 removals each, 2023 saw 142,580, and 2024 showed 253,488.
"When you have people show up by the millions and the number of people being deported goes down by 40-something percent, you are incentivising more people to come," the senator said.
The Facts
President-elect Donald Trump has promised to lead the largest deportation effort in U.S. history, but data from the Department of Homeland Security shows that it is President Barack Obama who holds the record for the most deportations, having removed nearly three million individuals during his eight years in office.
This figure surpasses deportations under both Obama's predecessors and successors, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Migration Policy Institute data reviewed by Newsweek. The data reflects "removals," which are formal deportations in which an individual is officially ordered to leave the U.S. under legal proceedings.
During President Trump's first term, that data showed the administration oversaw the removal of 2,001,280 people.
Numbers then jumped significantly during Biden's term, with a total of 4,677,460 at last count in July 2024.
Responding to questions from Newsweek about the data, Graham's office said the numbers shown on his chart were from ICE data.
But ICE is not the only agency responsible for removals. The numbers shown did not reflect those deported across all DHS agencies, such as from Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Austin Kocher, an immigration researcher at Syracuse University, told Newsweek that there are important distinctions in the data between those turned away at the southwest or northern borders, and those who are deported after spending months or several years deeper in the country.
"That distinction is really important because those numbers very often get lumped together and get used to shape the perceptions of different administrations," Kocher said. "No one has come close to the deportation numbers of the Obama administration. Trump didn't come anywhere close. Biden has deported lots of people. Trump basically did not."
The large number of deportations during the Obama administration drew widespread criticism from immigrant advocacy groups, who labeled him the "Deporter-in-Chief." Many argued that the policies disproportionately affected low-priority cases, including parents of U.S.-born children and long-time residents without criminal records.
At the same time, one of the lasting legacies of Obama's administration was Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — known as DACA — a program launched in 2012 that protected over 800,0000 undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children from deportation.
During Biden's term, record numbers of illegal southwest border crossings overshadowed the high numbers of removals happening in tandem.
While Trump's plan aims to significantly increase deportations, experts warn that logistical challenges, including international cooperation and resource limitations, could complicate the scale of his proposal.
Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told Newsweek that it was likely Biden would surpass Trump when it came to deportations, but Obama will have outpaced them both.
"I think that one of the big differences when we think about these deportations is where they are originating from," she said. "So particularly when we look at the Biden administration, many of these deportations are coming from [Covid-era] Title 42 expulsions and they're originating at the border, as opposed to arrests originating in the interior of the country.
"I think that that's an important caveat because although the total numbers may be high, where they're originating from says a lot about who the people are that are actually being returned."
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Many of those removed under Title 42, enacted during the pandemic to effectively close the border, came from Mexico and Central America. The origins of migrants have diversified greatly since 2021, with growing numbers of arrivals from Africa and Asia.
At Tuesday's hearing, Democrats and Republicans were in agreement than dangerous migrant criminals needed to be deported, but they were divided over the idea that undocumented migrants without criminal records should also be removed.
Graham said he wanted to find solutions for "Dreamers," or DACA recipients, to prevent them from being deported.
Democratic Party California Senator Alex Padilla, who sits on the committee, said that Trump will "inevitably include those without criminal convictions of any type" in order to achieve higher deportation numbers.
Putzel-Kavanaugh, of the Migrant Policy Institute, said the sheer expense of each removal could prove to be a major barrier to the mass deportation plan, along with the lack of resources at ICE.
"There are certain countries who just don't cooperate in accepting their nationals," the analyst said, pointing to Venezuela. "There are also countries which are willing to accept their nationals, but the timetable for that may be quite lengthy. Maybe one flight is accepted per month or a certain number of flights every few weeks."
Putzel-Kavanaugh pointed to recent removal flights to China as an example. Those flights have had a hundred or so people on board each time, despite over 38,000 encounters with Chinese nationals along the southwest border in Fiscal Year 2024.
"I think the biggest issue really comes down to our immigration system not being built for the current challenges that we see today," she said.
"It's a little bit of a broken record at this point, but it continues to be the truth: Without congressional action, we are going to continue to see, under any administration, these kinds of resource and capacity constraints, because our system is mostly set up for a border that just doesn't exist anymore. The border is vastly different than when the systems were built and put in place."
The Ruling
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False.
Official DHS data taken in totality shows Democrat Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden each oversaw higher numbers of deportations or repatriations of illegal immigrants during their terms than President-elect Donald Trump did in his first term.
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