Was Obama Really the "Deporter in Chief?" Not Even Close

Bryan Caplan

Immigration activists repeated named Obama the "Deporter in Chief."  Were they right?  Strictly speaking, yes: More human beings were deported under Obama than any other presidency in history.  Substantively, however, the critics were very wrong.  Key fact: U.S. immigration law - and U.S. immigration statistics - makes a big distinction between full-blown deportations ("Removals") and "voluntarily" returning home under the threat of full-blown deportation ("Returns"). 

The distinction is not entirely cosmetic.  If you re-enter after Removal, you face a serious risk of federal jail time if you're caught.  If you re-enter after a mere Return, you generally don't.  But Return is still almost as bad as Removal, since both exile you from the country where you prefer to reside.  Since I've previously suggested that we should count each Return as 85% of a Removal, I've constructed a "Deportation Index" equal to Removals + .85*Returns to capture the substance of U.S. immigration policy.  Check out the numbers:

Year	Removals	Returns	Deportation Index
1977	31,263	867,015	768,226
1978	29,277	975,515	858,465
1979	26,825	966,137	848,041
1980	18,013	719,211	629,342
1981	17,379	823,875	717,673
1982	15,216	812,572	705,902
1983	19,211	931,600	811,071
1984	18,696	909,833	792,054
1985	23,105	1,041,296	908,207
1986	24,592	1,586,320	1,372,964
1987	24,336	1,091,203	951,859
1988	25,829	911,790	800,851
1989	34,427	830,890	740,684
1990	30,039	1,022,533	899,192
1991	33,189	1,061,105	935,128
1992	43,671	1,105,829	983,626
1993	42,542	1,243,410	1,099,441
1994	45,674	1,029,107	920,415
1995	50,924	1,313,764	1,167,623
1996	69,680	1,573,428	1,407,094
1997	114,432	1,440,684	1,339,013
1998	174,813	1,570,127	1,509,421
1999	183,114	1,574,863	1,521,748
2000	188,467	1,675,876	1,612,962
2001	189,026	1,349,371	1,335,991
2002	165,168	1,012,116	1,025,467
2003	211,098	945,294	1,014,598
2004	240,665	1,166,576	1,232,255
2005	246,431	1,096,920	1,178,813
2006	280,974	1,043,381	1,167,848
2007	319,382	891,390	1,077,064
2008	359,795	811,263	1,049,369
2009	391,341	582,596	886,548
2010	381,738	474,195	784,804
2011	386,020	322,098	659,803
2012	416,324	230,360	612,130
2013	434,015	178,691	585,902
2014	407,075	163,245	545,833
2015	333,341	129,122	443,095

Notice: Despite the rise in Removals under Obama, Returns crashed.  Obama's Deportation Index, therefore, falls as soon as he takes office - and then declines further every single year!  By 2015, Obama's D.I. is half its 2009 value and about one-third of its previous peak under Bush II.

Does this mean Democrats are the genuine friend of the immigrant?  Not exactly.  Here are the average D.I.s for every president from Carter to Obama.  The last column adjusts for population in millions, which, as you can see, makes the pattern even more extreme.

President	Average D.I.	Average D.I./Pop/10^6
Carter	776,019	3,471
Reagan	882,572	3,718
Bush I	889,657	3,534
Clinton	1,322,215	4,861
Bush II	1,135,175	3,861
Obama	645,445	2,068

Yes, while Obama has the lowest D.I. of any president over the last four decades, the real Deporter in Chief was none other than fellow Democrat Bill Clinton. Adjusting for population, no one else even comes close.  Indeed, while I'm very confident that Trump's D.I. will exceed Obama's, it's far from clear that Trump will manage to displace Clinton from the top spot.  (Betting odds: I'll give 4:1 that Trump's average D.I. when he leaves office will exceed Obama's, but only even money than he'll exceed Clinton's).

The lesson, as usual, is that we should look past surface rhetoric to the bedrock of numbers.  While both Democrats and Republicans casually equate Clinton and Obama, their immigration policies were as different as day and night.