Now We Know: Obama And Biden Deportation Numbers Were Bogus

How many times have you heard it said that Barack Obama was “deporter in chief”? How many times did Joe Biden brag that he’d deported more illegal immigrants than Donald Trump had in his first term?

Turns out, those were wild distortions of the truth bordering – if you will pardon the pun – on outright lies.

In late 2024, for example, we saw stories about how deportations that year were the largest in a decade, beating Trump’s record in what would be his first term.

As NPR put it, this meant that “the Republican narrative that the Biden administration has not done anything to combat illegal immigration is just not true.”

The New York Times, of all places, called the lie on this (albeit unintentionally).

Over the weekend, it published a story about how many people Trump has deported. Except in doing so, it broke down the number of deportations “of people arrested inside the country” and those “arrested at the border.”

There’s a big difference. During the Obama and Biden administrations illegals were flooding across the border. They came in record numbers during the Biden years.

Turning them around and sending them home isn’t the same as removing those who managed to sneak past border agents, or worse, were caught and released. But the press never made that distinction.

What did the Times report?

That in his first year, Trump arrested and deported 230,000 illegals inside the country – a number, it says that “is already higher than the total during the entire four years of the Biden administration.”

In contrast, the number being turned around at the border has dropped from roughly 600,000 in 2024, Biden’s final year in office, to just over 250,000 in 2025, the first year of Trump’s second term.

See also: “This Is No Time To Panic About ICE“

But that’s good news. Because it means fewer are now trying to come into the country illegally under Trump.

So, not only has Trump made remarkable progress in securing the border, he is actually doing his job and removing those inside the country who are here illegally.

This should be cause for celebration.

The ones who deserve to be condemned are Obama and Biden for gaslighting the country about their immigration policies.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board