Debunking the Obama Deporter-in-Chief Narrative

Desperate Democrats are in need of an immigration policy popular with more than the staff of the faculty lounge at Harvard. Some of the consultant class are advocating for a return to the “sensible” policies of President Barack Obama. After all, President Obama was called the “deporter-in-chief” by open-borders zealots. For those who didn’t spend the Obama term with their heads in the sand or clouds, this was never the case. President Obama was not the deporter-in-chief, and deportation numbers did not “go up” during his tenure. The “deporter-in-chief” label was a political messaging campaign designed to make the President trying to amnesty tens of millions of illegal aliens look like a border hawk. 

Now, I know you are skeptical since President Obama has been called the deporter-in-chief for over a decade. But you should not be surprised at this point to learn that the media lied to you again. On the issue of President Obama and deportations, it was simply a matter of accounting subterfuge.

The L.A. Times back in 2014 set the record straight:

“But the portrait of a steadily increasing number of deportations rests on statistics that conceal almost as much as they disclose. A closer examination shows that immigrants living illegally in most of the continental U.S. are less likely to be deported today than before Obama came to office, according to immigration data.

Expulsions of people who are settled and working in the United States have fallen steadily since his first year in office, and are down more than 40% since 2009.”

So wherefore art thou, deporter-in-chief? How did President Obama earn the honorific when removals were dropping steadily in his term? 

The L.A. Times, again, has the answer (emphasis added):

“On the other side of the ledger, the number of people deported at or near the border has gone up — primarily as a result of changing who gets counted in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s deportation statistics.

The vast majority of those border crossers would not have been treated as formal deportations under most previous administrations. If all removals were tallied, the total sent back to Mexico each year would have been far higher under those previous administrations than it is now.”

Yes, you read that right. President Obama earned his big bad deporter-in-chief moniker by…counting people turned around at the border as “deportations.” This is like a baseball player being allowed to count triples as home runs for the purpose of breaking the home-run record. As the article points out, if Presidents Bush and Clinton had counted “deportations” the way Obama did, they would both blow him out of the water. 

One reason this accounting is dubious is that aliens turned around at the border usually attempt re-entry multiple times. President Obama’s deportation record includes turning the same alien back multiple times, and each re-entry is counted as another “deportation.” It is plausible that a few hundred individual aliens accounted for a statistically significant portion of the overall Obama deportation record, with some aliens likely being “deported " hundreds of times under the new accounting. 

To be clear, it is to President Obama’s credit that he at least tried to turn back recent illegal arrivals. It is not really our concern if he counts those as “deportations” or not. If you disagree, then feel free to look at the past four years when President Biden successfully avoided the “deporter-in-chief” label by bringing in millions of illegal aliens. At least Obama was trying to appear strong. 

The reason we have to debunk this Obama myth is simply because actual Democrats have been fooled by the lie. Many Democrats today either were not paying attention then or are completely unaware of the actual Obama immigration policies. They have no idea that Donald Trump won the 2016 election on the immigration issue because President Obama was BAD on the issue as well. 

President Obama was in office when the 2014 unaccompanied alien children (UAC) border crisis began. The UACs began coming in 2013 after Obama created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Under DACA, Obama said he had the power to unilaterally refuse to enforce immigration law against any group of aliens he deemed appropriate. In addition, he gave these amnestied aliens employment authorization.

Put another way, DACA told the world President Obama would not enforce immigration law against children brought here illegally by their parents (or smugglers). Latin America listened, and tens of thousands of children were sent up to the border to take advantage of the “deporter-in-chief’s” amnesty program. 

What was President Obama’s response to the 2014 UAC border crisis? He tried to create an even bigger executive amnesty program for illegal parents of American citizens and lawful permanent residents called DAPA for short. He also created a parole program to fly aliens directly to the United States from Central America called CAM. First, Obama said we could not punish children for the sins of their parents. Then he turned around and said we can’t punish illegal parents for their sins. For a “deporter-in-chief,” he sure created a lot of rewards programs for illegal entry. 

2014 was a terminal time for the Obama presidency. His immigration position was so bad that he even delayed the announcement of DAPA until after the 2014 midterm elections at the request of Democrats, fearing further blowback. They were right to be worried. President Obama received a sound across-the-board defeat in the 2014 midterms, dwarfing 2010. 

Does any of this read like President Obama is the north star for Democrats on immigration? If there is an example from Obama for Democrats today, it is that they have to take border security and interior immigration enforcement seriously. President Obama always struggled to add substance to his charisma and political persona, but Democrats will need substantive immigration policy reforms that the old Nobel laureate lacked.

Democrats today can learn from President Obama that no matter how you message the border, the reality will break through to public consciousness. No matter what rhetorical weapons Obama pulled from his vast reservoir of skills, he couldn’t sweep the facts under the rug. Instead of doubling down on Obama’s failed policies, Democrats should learn from these mistakes. To earn trust on immigration and win again, Democrats will need to coalesce around an actual deporter-in-chief, not a facsimile.