Why Trump Deports Fewer Immigrants Than Obama

It's a testament to President Donald Trump's capacity for malice that his deportation policy has terrified more while deporting less. Arrests by his administration's Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2017 were about half what they were during President Barack Obama's peak years, 2010 and 2011, according to a new report by the Migration Policy Institute.

During Obama's first term, when he was laying the groundwork for what he hoped would be a comprehensive bargain on immigration, his administration aggressively enforced immigration law. ICE arrests peaked at more than 300,000 annually in 2010 and 2011. Deportations from the American interior -- in other words, not of people apprehended near the border — surpassed 200,000 in both those years, also about twice the number reached in 2017. Pro-immigrant groups took to calling Obama the "deporter in chief."