Biden Trying to Reform America’s Immigration Policy
The Claim
26,248 people have been deported under the Biden administration.
News posted on
Emerging story
On February 18th, 2021, Joella Roberts tweeted “26,248 people have been deported under the Biden administration.” In a follow up tweet, she added that “@BarackObama and @JoeBiden deported 409,849 people in 2012 alone. Very on brand of him.”
The tweet has received more than 9k retweets and nearly 40k likes. One user reacted by claiming that they’ve "already lost count of the number of promises Biden has broken."
Another user reacted by saying that “Politics are slow. It’s not Biden’s fault or even his administration. The USA is not a authoritarian regime, it’ll take time for stuff to happen because it’s a democracy.”
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar’s investigation found this claim to be misleading. The wording of this tweet and the follow-up tweets imply that Biden has chosen to deport all of these people, and hasn’t been making an effort to stop these deportations.
According to TIME, Biden tried to place a 100-day freeze on most deportations, but was blocked by a federal judge. During his first 100 days in office, Biden has promised to tear down many of Trump's strict immigration policies. He unveiled his immigration plan yesterday which includes a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, improvements to border security technology, and addresses the root causes of migration.
During Biden’s time with the Obama Administration, they prioritized the removals of undocumented immigrants with criminal records and ultimately deported more than 5.2 million people, according to the Migration Policy Institute (MPI). The Trump administration deported slightly more than one-third as many unauthorized immigrants during its first four years than the Obama administration in its first four years. The fact that the Obama administration deported a lot of people is true.
When reading the original tweet, context needs to be added that Biden is currently attempting to pass legislation to reform America’s immigration policies, and has attempted to put a 100-day pause on deportations.
