"Bill Clinton oversaw the highest total with approximately 12.3 million deportations (combining returns and removals) across his two terms, while Barack Obama recorded about 5.3 million removals over eight years, and Donald Trump conducted roughly 1.5 to 2.1 million removals during his first term.
Clinton's figures are inflated by a high volume of "returns," where individuals were turned away at the border without formal court orders; specifically, 93% of his 12.3 million total were returns rather than formal removals. In contrast, Obama saw a shift where interior deportations often outnumbered border returns, with a peak of 432,212 removals in 2013 alone. Trump's administration recorded 1.5 million deportations between 2017 and 2021 according to some DHS data, though other sources citing his first term specifically note 2.1 million removals."