The best available government data shows that under President Biden, formal immigration deportations (removals carried out by ICE, not including rapid expulsions at the border) have numbered in the hundreds of thousands, not in the millions.

Key numbers under Biden

  • In fiscal year (FY) 2022, ICE removals were roughly in the tens of thousands, with outside analyses and DHS data indicating about 70–80k people removed that year.
  • In FY 2023, independent fact-checkers report approximately 140k–150k formal removals worldwide.
  • In FY 2024, ICE reported a sharp jump to about 271,000 deportations, the highest yearly total in about a decade and higher than any single Trump-year total.

Adding those public figures together (2022–2024) yields on the order of half a million formal ICE removals under Biden so far, with exact totals varying slightly by source and definition.

Border removals vs. ICE deportations

A lot of online debate mixes up different categories:

  • ICE “removals” (deportations):
    These are the classic deportations people think of: a person already inside the U.S. is processed and physically removed by ICE. Under Biden, these averaged around 35,000 per year early on, then rose to over 270,000 in FY
  • Border “expulsions” or “returns”:
    These include rapid returns at the border (for example, under Title 42 early in Biden’s term, and later under the new asylum and border rules). There have been millions of encounters at the U.S.–Mexico border during Biden’s presidency, and a majority of those taken into custody in his first two years were expelled rather than released, but these are not all counted the same way as formal ICE deportations.

Because of this, some headlines saying “Biden deported more than Trump” are talking about combined border removals/returns plus ICE deportations, not just the traditional ICE removal count.

How this compares historically

  • Biden’s FY 2024 ICE removal number (about 271k) is:
    • Higher than Trump’s peak year (about 267k removals in 2019).
* Still below Barack Obama’s peak (over 300k in 2014).
  • Early in Biden’s presidency, deportations were significantly lower than under Trump, but by 2024 his administration ramped up enforcement and hit a decade-high annual total.

Why it’s hard to give one exact “Biden number”

If you see very different numbers online for “how many people were deported under Biden,” it is usually because:

  1. Some people count only ICE removals.
  2. Others combine ICE removals + border expulsions/returns.
  3. The time window can differ (just first two years vs full term so far).

Using the narrower, official ICE-removal lens, the total during Biden’s term so far is in the hundreds of thousands , dominated by the big jump to roughly 271k in FY 2024.

Information gathered from public data and reporting available on the internet and portrayed here.