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Who Was the Deporter-in-Chief of Illegals? Trump? Biden? Or Obama?

By Walter Donway

October 11, 2024

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The debate about immigration into the United States has gone from acrimonious to inflamed to what often sounds like the bitter clash of religious sects—especially in the progressive disappearance of reference to fact, principle, and especially context.

Inevitably, as we have come to expect, the mainstream media and liberal-left Democrats have re-imagined former president Donald J. Trump as Old Nick or New Nazi. Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is proposed for sainthood.

Trump and his allies have ignored historical context, distorted the record, and made denunciations from the pulpit.

On the other hand, Trump and his allies just as often have ignored historical context, distorted the record, and made denunciations from the pulpit—not of the choice of immigrants knowingly to violate the laws of the United States but their supposed criminality, insanity, and character.

At this point in the presidential election campaign, the focus has turned to “deportations.” Jamelle Bouie, in “The Miracle Cure of Deportations,” (NYT, Oct. 6, 2024), writes: “The former president is running on a promise to commit a moral crime of world-historical proportions”—deportation of undocumented/illegal immigrants. This comes to you with the powerful impression that Trump has innovated a historic proposal, new to America, to create humanitarian disaster. There is no mention, by Bouie, of any earlier deportations in America.

As an aside, Bouie has argued in Slate that there is “no such thing as a good Trump voter.” (You know, “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.”) A few days before that, he compared Trump voters to the “angry, recalcitrant whites” who resisted the Reconstruction era. And he has criticized the media for an unwillingness to label racism in the United States as “racist” (instead of “racial” or “racially charged”).

(The article itself comes in the same Sunday Opinion section as the Times’s official endorsement of Kamala Harris for president, “The Only Patriotic Choice for America” by the Times Editorial Board. The Times has not endorsed a Republican candidate since Dwight Eisenhower in 1956—17 elections in a row.)

The Times, like a wartime administration, has mobilized every resource to win the presidency for Harris.

As the election looms, the Times, like a wartime administration, has mobilized every resource to win the presidency for Harris. Increasingly, this becomes laughable, an embarrassment to journalism. For example, the opinion piece right below the one by Bouie is entitled, “J.D. Vance Smirks His Way into the Future.” So, it is Vance who smirks, not Tim Walz or Harris?

Q: When is a smile a smirk? A: When it is on the face of a Republican.

 

And Now, an Interruption for Context

In the campaign of sound bites and nightly repeated slogans on CNN—always anti-Trump, with bumper stickers plastered across the bottom of the screen—context has largely gone by the boards. The debate, of course, is complex, building on decades of accumulated research, opinion, new reports with anecdotal evidence, and bias.[1] Fortunately, a few facts in context can be remarkably clarifying; but even a couple dozen facts, including statistics, apparently would exhaust the entire allocation for both candidates. What follows, then, is the briefest review of the deportation slugging match’s context.

There are some 9 million people around the world who are waiting to enter (and work in) the United States legally.

There are some 9 million people around the world who are waiting to enter (and work in) the United States legally after qualifying with the requisite standards for green cards. Their wait has stretched to several years. Another 1.6 million are awaiting consideration of their asylum applications.

As of 2022, there were approximately 11 million undocumented (illegal) immigrants in the United States. (Statistics come from pewresearch.com, PoliFact, and factcheck.org, among others). At various times, Trump and senior Republicans like Senator Marco Rubio have alleged that there are 20 million to 25 million illegals. (Different immigration groups, using different methodologies, estimate that the population here illegally ranges from 10.9 million to 16.8 million.)[2]

About half of the 11 million illegal immigrants now in the United States came over the southern border, breaking the law in the process.

About half of the 11 million illegal immigrants now in the United States came over the southern border, breaking the law in the process. The other half, roughly, came on temporary visas (e.g., student, tourist, or temporary work visas) and deliberately overstayed, defying apprehension.

Now for some historical context: In 2014, during the Obama Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted 315,943 removals legal under 8 U.S.C. 1227. In all, Obama deported more than 2.5 million illegal immigrants, his focus, reportedly, on “criminals.” You mean there ARE criminal immigrants?

To be specific, during Obama’s first three years in office, around 1.8 million people were deported, while around 800,000 deportations took place during Trump’s first three years, 186,000 the last year, for a total just under 1.0 million during his first term.

Is Obama the devil who introduced the “moral crime of world-historical proportions” into the American polity?

So, is Obama the devil who introduced the “moral crime of world-historical proportions” into the American polity? No, there is more context. In the 105 years between 1892 and 1997, the United States deported 2.1 million people. Between 1993 and 2001, during the presidency of Bill Clinton, about 870,000 people were deported. During the presidency of George W. Bush, January 2001 to January 2009, about 2.0 million people were deported, while, to repeat, between 2009 and 2017, the presidency of Barrack Obama, about 3.2 million people were deported.

Trump and leading Republican allies misrepresent Obama as too weak on immigrants, too delicate on deportations.

We have a situation where it is Trump and leading Republican allies who misrepresent Obama as too weak on immigrants, too delicate on deportations … Whereas Trump allegedly is ready to do the job. Except he has a record of less than 1.0 million deportations during his term as president.

Coming up to the present, since Biden became president and Harris vice president, the numbers have increased drastically. During the final two Trump years, 2019-2020, the Department of Homeland Security documented 1.4 million arrests. In less than their first 26 months, the Biden/Harris Administration made more than 5 million arrests. Biden has deported the majority of the apprehended individuals; Trump deported a minority. Biden/Harris deported at 3.5 times the rate of Trump.[3]

To bring this up to date, PoliFact: The Poynter Institute thus succinctly summarizes Trump’s position on immigration (stated himself, not “those backed only by outside groups such as Project 25”):

“Carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.

“During his presidency, Trump promised to—but didn’t—deport all immigrants living in the country illegally. (Immigration experts have told PolitiFact that mass deportation efforts would likely fail because of concerns over cost and constitutionality).

“Trump hasn’t provided detailed plans for mass deportations or explained where the financial resources required would come from if Congress did not substantially increase appropriations. He has said he would begin by deporting criminals, and use local law enforcement and the National Guard to help.”[4]

It has been argued, by some, that such efforts, even if they fall short, would send a message to potential illegal immigrants very different from repeated “amnesties” for undocumented immigrants.

 

A Mexico Problem

Understand that statistics such as these customarily are presented not in attacking Biden but correcting the record distorted by Trump, who insisted enforcement under Biden fell off from his years.

In general, who is deported? In 2018, the top countries of origin of those deported were Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador … all down the list of Central and South American countries to #10, India, with a comparative handful of deportees. This has not changed much in recent decades.

So does the alleged demonic determination of Donald Trump run through a context of a century and a quarter of America history amount to one long “moral crime of world-historical proportions”?

No, we have a Mexican-Central American problem. It begins with geography. We have a border with Mexico and, through Mexico, to the rest of Latin America. The opportunity to skip legal procedures to enter their new country illegally and get ahead of the worldwide list of law-abiding aspirants to America has always been there. Trump’s policies did not launch a “moral crime.” Nor did it begin with Obama, Bush, Clinton ….

Mexico is an upper-middle-income country that ranks as the second largest economy in Latin America. Its GDP is over $1.5 trillion, making it the fourth-largest economy in the Americas and among the world’s largest. Nevertheless, the economic policies of Mexico and most of Latin America continue decade after decade to favor the upper class and trap many others in poverty. The generalization is broad, but the long historical reality is glaring. And for reasons political, social, and cultural, one-third of Mexican territory is ruled by murderous criminal cartels.[5] That takes a certain culture of resignation, accepting inevitable corruption.

All this becomes a motive to seek opportunity in a still semi-free, partial market economy—the engine of American prosperity still in place despite decades of attack by the interventionist-welfare-state ideology and more recently the wave of postmodernist/neo-Marxist ideology sweeping our universities, professions, and public intellectual life and increasingly the policies of Democrats and Republicans alike.

Manhattan Institute Senior Scholar Heather Mac Donald, co-author of The Immigration Solution: A Better Plan than Today’s, (Ivan R. Dee, 2007) advocates returning to the earlier U.S. policy of enforcing laws on the books and favoring:

“… immigrants whose education and skills will add more to the national prosperity than they cost taxpayers in health care, education, welfare, and—in too many cases—policing and incarceration.

“The United States continues to benefit from its immigrants, who bring an admirable work ethic and an entrepreneurial drive. Hard-working immigrants have revived flagging communities across the country. But the reason so many of the world’s peoples want to come to the United States is its respect for the rule of law. America’s economic dynamism and freedom rest on our culture of legality. Immigration does not stand outside of the law. What is unfair is when people who happen to live on the other side of a two-thousand-mile border jump the queue ahead of the hundreds of thousands of law-abiding foreigners patiently waiting to enter the country legally.”[6]

___________________________

A remarkable occurrence. For the fun of it, I asked the artificial intelligence program, CoPilot, “Have there been deportations in American history?” Characteristically, in a second or so, it dashed off before my eyes a list of four major deportations in the United States, then, in the next moment, all that disappeared, and it said, “Sorry, I can’t comment on that.” I entered the same question two more times, with the same result. The last statement said, “Sorry, I really can’t comment on that. Let’s discuss something else.” So, let’s see, did CoPilot begin to answer and then encounter its routine algorithm, “Check if this hurts Harris’s election,” answered yes, and zapped it? When I went back a bit later to try another question, it was ready: “Sorry, I can’t discuss politics.”
 
NOTES

[1] FactCheck.org® A Project of The Annenberg Public Policy Center “Breaking Down the Immigration Figures” by Lori Robertson. Posted on February 27, 2024.

[2] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/jun/11/marco-rubio/there-arent-20-million-to-30-million-immigrants-in/

[3]https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/mar/08/alejandro-mayorkas/has-biden-deported-more-people-in-nine-months-than/

[4] https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/sep/30/donald-trumps-2024-campaign-promises-heres-his-vis/

[5] Criminal Violence in Mexico | Global Conflict Tracker (cfr.org)

[6] https://manhattan.institute/article/mac-the-immigration-debate

 

 

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