Biden sets highest deportation numbers in ten years

In 2024, the Biden administration sets a deportation record, with over 270,000 immigrants deported by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

This figure, the highest in ten years, is reminiscent of the deportation record reached under Barack Obama’s administration in 2014.

ICE deported 271,484 immigrants last fiscal year, marking the highest level of deportations since 2014, according to a newly released annual report.

— CNN (@cnn.com) 2024-12-19T23:16:29.359Z

The latest ICE data reveals that the Biden administration carried out a significant number of deportations in the last fiscal year, with exactly 271,484 immigrants deported.

This figure far exceeds that of the first two years of the Biden presidency, which were heavily impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, while remaining higher than the levels recorded during Trump’s first term in office, which promises mass deportations of immigrants as soon as he returns to power next January.

This ICE report, which covers the period from October 1, 2023 to September 30, 2024, reveals that those deported from the US came from around 200 different countries, the majority having crossed the US-Mexico border illegally.

ICE primarily targeted immigrants representing a risk to public safety, national security or border security.

The agency carried out specific operations, and of the 271,484 deportations carried out between October 2023 and November 2024, over 30% involved immigrants with criminal records.

Under the Biden administration, immigrant deportations increased after a slowdown due to the pandemic, rising from 59,000 in 2021 to 72,000 in 2022. They then jumped to 180,000 in 2023, reaching a record of over 271,000 in 2024.

Under the Trump administration, deportations reached 226,000 in 2017, 256,000 in 2018, and a peak of 267,000 in 2019, before dropping to 185,000 in 2020 due to the pandemic.

Deportation data for Trump’s first term is well below that of Obama’s presidency, during which around 2.5 million immigrants were deported between 2009 and 2014, with a record of over 400,000 deportations in 2012 and 2014.