All trendy U.S. presidents, each Republican and Democratic, have tried to cut back the inhabitants of tens of millions of undocumented immigrants. However their quite a lot of methods have no longer had important effects, with the inhabitants soaring round 11 million from 2005 to 2022.
President Donald Trump seeks to switch that.
With harsh rhetoric that has sowed worry in immigrant communities, and insurance policies that forget about immigrants’ due procedure rights, Trump has pursued deportation techniques that vary dramatically from the ones of every other trendy U.S. president.
As a student who examines the historical past of U.S. immigration legislation and enforcement, I imagine that it stays a long way from transparent whether or not the Trump White Space will considerably scale back the undocumented inhabitants. However even though the management’s efforts fail, the concern and harm to the U.S. immigrant neighborhood will stay.
Presidents Bush and Obama
To extend deportations, in 2006 President George W. Bush started the usage of place of work raids. Amongst those sweeps was once the then-largest immigration place of work operation in U.S. historical past at a meat processing plant in Postville, Iowa in 2008.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deployed 900 brokers in Postville and arrested 398 staff, 98% of whom have been Latino. They have been chained in combination and arraigned in teams of 10 for legal felony fees of annoyed id robbery, file fraud and use of stolen Social Safety numbers. Some 300 have been convicted, and 297 of them served prison sentences ahead of being deported.
Males wait in a maintaining mobile on June 21, 2006, in Nogales, Arizona.
Spencer Platt/Getty Pictures
In 2008, Bush additionally initiated Safe Communities, a coverage that sought to deport noncitizens – each lawful everlasting citizens in addition to undocumented immigrants – who have been arrested for crimes. Some 2 million immigrants have been deported all through Bush’s two phrases in administrative center.
The Obama management restricted Safe Communities to concentrate on the removing of noncitizens convicted of felonies. It deported a list 400,000 noncitizens in fiscal 12 months 2013, which led detractors to check with President Barack Obama because the “Deporter in Chief.”
Obama additionally centered fresh entrants and nationwide safety threats and pursued felony prosecutions for unlawful reentry to the U.S. Virtually all of those insurance policies constructed on Bush’s, even supposing Obama just about deserted place of work raids.
Regardless of those enforcement measures, Obama additionally initiated Deferred Motion for Formative years Arrivals, or DACA, in 2012. The coverage equipped reduction from deportation and gave paintings authorization to greater than 500,000 undocumented immigrants who got here to america as kids.
Obama deported about 3 million noncitizens, however the dimension of the undocumented inhabitants didn’t lower dramatically.
The primary Trump management and Biden
Trump’s first management broke new immigration enforcement flooring in numerous techniques.
He started his presidency by means of issuing what was once known as a “Muslim ban” to limit the access into the U.S. of noncitizens from predominantly Muslim countries.
Early in Trump’s first management, federal brokers expanded immigration operations to incorporate raids at courthouses, which up to now have been off-limits.
In 2017, Trump attempted to rescind DACA, however the Perfect Courtroom rejected Trump’s effort in 2020.
In 2019, Trump applied the Stay in Mexico coverage that for the primary time compelled noncitizens who got here to the U.S. border in quest of asylum to attend in Mexico whilst their claims have been being made up our minds. He additionally invoked Identify 42 in 2020 to near U.S. borders all through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump succeeded in lowering criminal immigration numbers all through his first time period. On the other hand, there’s no proof that his enforcement insurance policies lowered the scale of the entire undocumented inhabitants.
President Joe Biden sought to loosen up – even supposing no longer abandon – some immigration enforcement measures applied all through Trump’s first time period.
His management slowed development of the border wall championed by means of Trump. Biden additionally stopped place of work raids in 2021, and in 2023, he ended Identify 42.
In 2023, Biden sought to answer migration surges in a measured model, by means of quickly last ports of access and lengthening arrests.
In making an attempt to implement the borders, his management from time to time pursued difficult measures. Biden endured deportation efforts directed at felony noncitizens. Immigrant rights teams criticized his management when armed Border Patrol officials on horseback have been videotaped chasing Haitian migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.
As of 2022, the center of the Biden’s time period, an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants lived within the U.S.
Immigration-rights activists level a rally out of doors President Barack Obama’s Democratic Congressional Marketing campaign Committee fundraiser in Los Angeles, after the president signed a invoice that tightened safety on the Mexico border in August 2010.
Mark Ralston/AFP by the use of Getty Pictures
A 2nd probability
Since his 2nd inauguration, Trump has pursued a mass deportation marketing campaign via government orders which might be remarkable of their scope.
In January 2025, he introduced an expanded, expedited removing procedure for any noncitizen apprehended anyplace within the nation – no longer simply the border area, as have been U.S. apply since 1996.
In March, Trump issued a presidential proclamation to deport Venezuelan nationals who have been participants of the Tren de Aragua gang, designated a overseas 15 May Organization by means of the State Division. In doing so, he invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 – an act used thrice in U.S. historical past all through declared wars that empowers presidents to take away overseas nationals from international locations at warfare with the U.S.
Stating an “invasion” of migrants into the U.S. in June, Trump deployed the army to help in immigration enforcement in Los Angeles.
Trump additionally sought to dramatically upend birthright citizenship, the Constitutional provision that promises citizenship to any individual born within the U.S. He issued an government order in January that might bar citizenship to other folks born within the U.S. to undocumented oldsters.
California Nationwide Guard participants stand in formation all through a protest in Los Angeles on June 14, 2025.
David Pashaee/Heart East Pictures/AFP by the use of Getty Pictures
The birthright government order has been challenged in federal court docket and is most commonly most likely running its method as much as the Perfect Courtroom.
Below the second one Trump management, immigration arrests are up, however exact deportation numbers are in flux.
ICE in June arrested the the general public in a month in a minimum of 5 years, more or less 30,000 immigrants. However deportations of noncitizens – more or less 18,000 – lagged in the back of the ones all through the Obama management’s record-setting 12 months of 2013 by which greater than 400,000 noncitizens have been deported.
The space between arrests and deportations presentations the demanding situations the Trump management faces in making just right on his promised mass deportation marketing campaign.
Undocumented immigrants steadily come to the U.S. to paintings or search protection from herbal failures and mass violence.
Those problems have no longer been severely addressed by means of any trendy U.S. president. Till it’s, we will be able to be expecting the undocumented inhabitants to stay within the tens of millions.
