Who’s the Deporter-in-Chief?

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Bryan Caplan:

 U.S. immigration law — and U.S. immigration statistics — makes a big distinction between full-blown deportations (“Removals”) and “voluntarily” returning home under the threat of full-blown deportation (“Returns”).

The distinction is not entirely cosmetic. If you re-enter after Removal, you face a serious risk of federal jail time if you’re caught. If you re-enter after a mere Return, you generally don’t. But Return is still almost as bad as Removal, since both exile you from the country where you prefer to reside. Since I’ve previously suggested that we should count each Return as 85% of a Removal, I’ve constructed a “Deportation Index” equal to Removals + .85*Returns to capture the substance of U.S. immigration policy. Check out the numbers:

No, no, no. I love ideas like this, but it demands a visual presentation. Here it is:

Under Obama, removals were much higher than any other president. However, there were far fewer returns. Thus, “deportations” were higher than any other president, but the total number of people who were actually sent home was lower than any other president.

The next step is to calculate this as a percentage of the number of illegal immigrants in the country each year. Here it is:

This is approximate, since the total population of illegal immigrants is a little fuzzy before 2000. But it’s close enough. Obama still has a higher removal rate and a lower index rate than any other president, but the winner for the title of Deporter-in-Chief is…Ronald Reagan. Every president since then has been successively more tolerant of a large undocumented population.

THIS IS BIG

A generous board member just chipped in a $50,000 digital matching gift, and we need your help to make the most of it. Any donation you make online from now until September 30 will be matched dollar-for-dollar.

In an all-important election season, we’re reaching millions of Americans with fearless, kickass, truth-telling reporting.

With your support going twice as far, we can lead the way these next 60 days in showing the corporate media how to cover the unique danger that Trump represents and not make the same mistakes they did in 2016 and 2020.

Please help with a gift of any amount if you can right now. And know that it will be doubled—and that we’ll be so grateful.

payment methods

THIS IS BIG

A generous board member just chipped in a $50,000 digital matching gift, and we need your help to make the most of it. Any donation you make online from now until September 30 will be matched dollar-for-dollar.

In an all-important election season, we’re reaching millions of Americans with fearless, kickass, truth-telling reporting.

With your support going twice as far, we can lead the way these next 60 days in showing the corporate media how to cover the unique danger that Trump represents and not make the same mistakes they did in 2016 and 2020.

Please help with a gift of any amount if you can right now. And know that it will be doubled—and that we’ll be so grateful.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate