this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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How Many Migrants Are Crossing the Border
Immigrant: Hello I’d like to enter the country with no visa, passport, or other documentation.
Border guard: I’m sorry you can’t do that, you’ll have to go back.
Headline: Obama deported 3.1 Million immigrants!
Lemmy: How terrible Democrats sent ICE gestapo to round up 3 million hard working taxpayers from their homes and workplace!
Snopes rates the claim "US deported more than 3M people during Obama presidency. Most did not have chance to plead case in court" as mostly true. I truly do not understand how your characterization of these deportations follows from the link you posted and your quote from it.
Well let's break it down then, per your link. The number they deem "mostly true" comes from a couple of sources, one of which is MIgration Policy Institute.
So let's look at that ". . . moving from a judicial system prior to 1996" - what happened in 1996?
Well according to this,
Now I'm pretty sure you can grok it from here but for the sake of wrapping it up:
And finally
So
It follows thusly: People who appear at the border without paperwork (visa, immigration status, asylum status, other) are not subject to trial, they can be turned away. Additionally, people without paperwork who have already been told to leave but have not can be removed without trial. This is not based on Obama's policy. This is based on a law from 1996, which as you well know is before Obama or Biden became President.
These bureaucratic legal walls to immigration are not particularly fair much less ideal, but they are a reality of a national border. In particular, that border policy from 1996 changed the way it had been handled for decades up to that point and created the system Obama inherited which he abided by. He did not carry out raids the likes of which we've seen in the past six months and he did not sanction them, which is what the comments about the meme are suggesting.
My point, then, is that there can be "3.1 million 'deported'" based on a very loose definition of a practical daily event at the border, or related border findings, and it does not mean the insanity and chaos of ICE and associated Constitutional quagmires as created by this idiotic administration, where they're removing people who have visas, who have residency status, who did not commit fraud, etc. etc.
But people don't want to look at nuance in any way shape or form, and the so-called-left would rather take that loosely-worded mostly-true fact and demonize the Democrats so that they can pat themselves on the head for being ultra-left-überprogressives who don't need to vote. I disagree with it.
Obama absolutely did carry out and sanction deportation raids. To be clear, I'm not claiming he was as aggressive as Trump is being now. The image itself is an attempt to point out that Obama did so in a more orderly fashion.
Again, your characterization of these deportations all being people showing up at the border without papers is unsubstantiated. Nothing about expedited removal requires a person be present at the border. I could be mistaken about this, but a "removal" implies that a person is not at a border crossing. Indeed, in the MPI report, the tables listing deportation numbers have separate columns for border apprehensions and removals, and the removal column for Obama is at around 3M.
A few points: Obama had fewer border apprehensions and removals than both Bush and Clinton. This could be the case for any number of reasons, one of which could be lighter enforcement. But it is the case that the Obama administration bragged about its hawkishness on the border. My understanding is he did so in a failed attempt to appease the GOP and get DACA put into legislation. But regardless of all of this, it seems ICE under Obama did remove around 3 million people, not at the border.
So from the link I posted at the top of this chain, it says:
That’s Oct and Nov 2023. But for the sake of discussion, let’s say it was similar enough during Obama’s terms.
300k/mo. * 10mo = 3,000,000 people. We agree there?
If so, that’s substantiated claim that 3,600,000 people came through the border in a year. Not all were refused entry, of course, but the numbers are there.
This link says
So I think it’s very reasonable to infer the “millions” that were “deported” by Obama and Biden were largely done so at border entry points. Millions were apparently allowed entry with notices to appear at court. None of which are the implied gestapo tactics and zero of which was the rhetoric of this horrible ‘administration’.
And that’s what I object to. It’s easy and stupid to pretend trump is carrying on what Obama and Biden have done w/r/t immigration. And it all feeds into this mentality that Democrats are just as bad, and that’s Bullshit.