Has Biden deported more people in nine months than in past years? Fact-checking Alejandro Mayorkas

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas rebutted the unfounded theory that the Biden administration is allowing migrants to illegally enter the U.S. to increase the Democrats’ chances of winning elections.  

"Is it the policy of the Biden administration to allow as many migrants to come across the border in order to change the political dynamics, the electoral dynamics of America?" CNN’s "State of the Union" host Dana Bash asked Mayorkas on March 3.

"Of course not, and the facts indicate that that is absolutely false," Mayorkas said, citing his agency’s deportation statistics as evidence. "Since May of last year we have removed or returned more individuals than in any year since 2015 and we haven't even run 12 months."

Bash cited comments from former President Donald Trump, who said during a campaign rally that "Biden’s conduct on our border is by any definition a conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America," and that Biden wants to "nullify the will of the actual American voters."

"Over the last three years we’ve removed, returned, or expelled more people than in all four years of the prior administration," Mayorkas continued. "You know, the facts matter. And the rhetoric, we should brush aside."

Facts matter to PolitiFact, so we fact-checked Mayorkas’ comments. We found that his cautious wording — focusing on specific metrics — accurately reflected the available data. But someone hearing his claim might conclude that he meant all sorts of deportation efforts. And it’s not true, looking more widely, that the past nine months of data exceeded any single year since 2015. Fiscal year 2022, during the Biden administration, would have been the highest, because it included a public health policy that allowed quick expulsions of migrants.

Here’s an overview of deportation jargon, the numbers over the past few years and their context amid increasing illegal immigration. 

The federal government classifies deportations as the removal of noncitizens from the U.S. It tracks it in a few different ways:

• Removals: When people are sent out of the U.S. via an official court order and often penalized for illegal entry. This can include people who have lived in the United States for years and people who recently arrived.

• Returns: When people are returned to their home countries without legal penalties and without being placed in formal removal proceedings. This happens at the border.

• Title 42 expulsions: These happened from March 2020 to May 2023 under a public health policy. Some people arriving at the border were not let into the United States and were expelled without legal penalties.

Mayorkas was careful with his terminology. He is on track that there have been more returns and removals in the past nine months than in any full fiscal year since 2015, according to DHS data. 

From May 2023 to January 2024, the latest available data, there have been 520,000 returns and removals. The next highest number is the 518,000 returns and removals in fiscal year 2019, under the Trump administration.

But to someone who is unfamiliar with deportation metrics and jargon, it could sound as if the past nine months of returns and removals exceeded any full year since 2015. If we include Title 42 expulsions, the numbers change. 

From fiscal years 2015 to 2024, "returns" and "removals" were the lowest in 2020 to 2022, because most people encountered at the border were turned away under a different enforcement strategy — expelled under Title 42. In 2020 — removals, returns and Title 42 expulsions added up to 608,000, and increased to 1.4 million in 2022.

A time frame Mayorkas focused on in his comparison — the past nine months — did not include any Title 42 expulsions. The administration stopped those expulsions in May 2023. Title 42 expulsions also weren’t available for the majority of the fiscal years Mayorkas included in his comparison.

Since the public health expulsion policy ended, removals and returns under Biden have increased. But so have Border Patrol encounters with people trying to cross the U.S. border. As a result, returns and removals are low as a proportion of the total number of these stops.

For example, in fiscal year 2015, there were about 592,000 apprehensions and 453,000 returns and removals. From May 2023 to January 2024, there were 520,000 removals and returns but 2.6 million encounters. (DHS started using the term "encounters" in March 2020 to include apprehensions under immigration law and expulsions under Title 42).  

We asked immigration experts why returns and removals haven’t kept up with the increase in encounters, and what that disproportion tells us about the Biden administration's efforts to remove people who are here illegally. 

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The rise in returns and removals under Biden’s administration shows "increased effort, even if appropriations ultimately set a hard limit on how high it can go," said David Bier, associate director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. He said absolute return and removal numbers matter more than their proportion to encounters because "DHS has no control over the number" of people who show up at U.S. borders.  

The numbers tell us only part of the story, immigration experts told us. 

The mismatch between returns and removals, and encounters under Biden’s administration is "primarily a reflection of the mismatch in resource allocation by Congress, which has failed to adequately fund the immigration system in its entirety," said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. 

That removals and returns have not kept up with the increase in encounters shows that "there are hard limits to the amount of enforcement that can be carried out absent additional funding from Congress, changes in the laws, or changes in international diplomacy," said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, an immigrant-rights advocacy group. 

Under Biden, the nationalities of people encountered at the border have increased, the Migration Policy Institute wrote in a January report. And to deport people, the U.S. needs a working relationship with their countries of origin.

China, for example, does not take back its citizens, even if U.S. authorities order their removal. People from countries that don’t cooperate with removals must be released because they legally cannot be indefinitely detained.

Mexico also plays a key role in the U.S. government's ability to remove Venezuelans and people from other countries who would otherwise be difficult to deport from the U.S. because of fraught diplomatic relationships.

Mexico has agreed to take 30,000 Venezuelans, Cubans, Nicaraguans or Haitians a month who arrive at U.S. borders and are removed.

"Without this collaboration, the U.S. would severely struggle to implement returns and removals at the current rate," Putzel-Kavanaugh said.

Mayorkas said, "Since May of last year we have removed or returned more individuals than in any year since 2015."

He’s right about this precise data. Over the past nine months, immigration officials have carried out 520,000 returns and removals, more than the previous high of 518,000 in fiscal year 2019.

But someone who is unfamiliar with deportation jargon could conclude that the past nine months have accounted for the largest number of times people have been sent out of the country since 2015. That’s not the case when accounting for expulsions under a public health policy that lasted from March 2020 to May 2023. In fiscal year 2022, people were removed, returned or expelled 1.4 million times.

Mayorkas’ statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. We rate it Mostly True.