Obama Deportations Definitely Not Record-Breaking

In its first four years the Obama administration deported 3.2 million aliens, averaging just over 800,000 per year. Pro-amnesty advocacy groups, administration officials, lawmakers, and lazy reporters all have claimed this is a record, but it is not. In fact, according to historical DHS statistics, this is the lowest total and annual average since the mid-1970s...

The statistic in the first sentence refers to the number of deportations claimed by ICE for 2012, not total deportations. In order to achieve this "record," ICE juiced its numbers by counting certain Border Patrol cases as ICE removals, which had not been done in prior years. (Border Patrol deportations are usually counted as "returns".) So ICE's deportation record under the Obama administration is about as valid as Barry Bonds' home run record.

Because the Obama administration has blurred the lines of which agencies can take credit for deportations, the only fair way to assess their performance is to count all deportations done by all the DHS agencies. These are reported every year in the DHS Yearbook of Immigration Statistics in Table 39, which shows the number of "removals" and "returns" by all immigration enforcement agencies going back to 1927.

There we find that the total number of aliens "sent back" under first four years of the Obama administration is just over 3.2 million (not 1.93 million, as Selway wrote). This is an annual average of just over 800,000 sent back per year. Official numbers for 2013 have not been released yet, but the total will be about the same, with just over 400,000 Border patrol deportations and about 370,000 attributed to ICE.

That is nowhere near the totals under George Bush's administration, which were over 10.3 million total deportations with an annual average of 1.2 million...