Tuesday, July 30, 2024


Joe Biden has expelled nearly 7 million illegal immigrants

Over the weekend, Jack Herrera had a piece in Politico that provides an interesting perspective on the Biden administration's immigration policy. It's true that illegal border crossings soared after Biden took office, but expulsions soared too, starting from his first day:

Most Americans don’t understand how many people the Biden-Harris administration has removed from the country.... In the spring of 2021, deep in the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic, I was in a camp in Tijuana, where some migrants were so hopeful the new president would let them in that they flew “BIDEN FOR PRESIDENT” flags outside their tents. But most of them who crossed got a slap from reality: They were quickly frog-marched by U.S. Border Patrol back through the deportation doorway, back to the squalid camps in cartel turf. Others got rapidly loaded onto ICE planes and flown back to Haiti, Guatemala, El Salvador, wherever. As the number of people crossing the border grew during Biden’s first two years in office, these expulsions reached a scorching pace. ICE charter flights bounced around the globe like Taylor Swift’s jet.

Naturally you want to see this in chart form. I'm here to help:

During Biden's term in office, he will have expelled, detained, or deported 6.9 million illegal immigrants. That's 73% more than Donald Trump.

This is why, despite the surge in migrants, the total population of illegal immigrants in the US has probably increased less than most people think. Out of roughly 11 million migrants (border crossers plus asylum seekers), around 7 million of them were expelled. At the same time, about 2 million illegal immigrants who are already in the country return to their homes every year. That gets us to 9 million. So net growth has probably been on the order of 2 million or so, an increase of 18%.

That's just a guess, and it might be off on either side. Still, you might wonder why, if this is the case, Biden hasn't bragged more about it. I imagine there are two reasons. First, it's still growth of 2 million illegal immigrants compared to roughly zero during the Trump administration. Second, the Democratic base doesn't want to hear that Biden has been pretty strict about expelling illegal immigrants. It's a no-win problem

 Kevin Drum

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