Immigration was among the biggest issues in the 2016 presidential race. Critics of then-President Barack Obama trashed his immigration policy which paved the way for then-candidate Donald Trump to run on an anti-migration agenda with long-lasting effects.
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Ten years and three presidents have past and the country is still enduring one of the biggest immigration crises we’ve ever seen. But while many are comparing the deportation records of Obama and Trump, so many are disregarding the core differences between the two presidents’ approach.
Those differences are so significant that there’s really no comparison between the two…no matter how much folks want there to be.
For starters, Trump’s second term has been fueled by rapid deportations and federal immigration agents repeatedly being accused of violating the constitution. Another fatal shooting of an American citizen, Alex Pretti, has sparked even more demands that Trump call off ICE. Despite public protests and bipartisan outrage, his mass deportation agenda hasn’t slowed down: Trump promised the largest deportation effort in American history with a million deportations.
On paper, those numbers don’t even begin to compare with Obama’s: DHS reported 605,000 people were deported in Trump’s first year of his second term. In contrast, Obama earned his title as “Deporter-in-Chief” by deporting somewhere in the realm of 3 million people across eight years… more than any of U.S. president in history.
By 2014, the Obama administration focused the deportation effort to “prioritize” criminals, terrorists and recent border crossers (with no real ties to the U.S.).
By the following year, ICE reported 91 percent of deportees held criminal records. Obama notably created pathways for hundreds of thousands of young migrations through the DREAMers’ Act. He also got sanctuary cities to cooperate with his deportation plan by following the law and requesting Congressional and local approval when needed, POLITICO reported.
Obama’s migration policy — while controversial — was quite effective on paper. The Democrat became the first since Ronald Reagan to leave office with basically the same amount of undocumented migrants in the country as when he was sworn in, NPR reported.
Dr. Ida Salusky, a professor at Northwestern University, explained to The Root why the public has such a visceral response to Trump’s approach in comparison to his predecessor.
“You remember events that have happened more recently,” she said of the “recency effect.” “You remember them more saliently and more accurately than things that are in the past.”
Salusky also noted that there are much different optics around Trump’s deportation narrative.
“While the Obama administration numerically deported more people, I think there were different optics and the narrative around what was happening,” the professor told The Root, pointing to Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric concerning “sh*thole countries” and “rapists, murders and criminals” as to why Trump’s immigration legacy has been largely criticized.
In addition to her work as a clinical psychologist, Salusky is also involved in The Midwest Human Rights Consortium, a multi-institutional organization in Chicago helping migrants navigate the American system. She admitted noticing glaring differences in the health and treatment of the migrant community in the past year.
“Regardless of the administration, immigration policies have been unfavorable in terms of the health and mental health of asylum seekers and their families,” Salusky said. “I think that has been amplified in this current administration.”
Trump has developed a reputation for taking a less focused approach– getting as many people deported as he can while fomenting racial divisiveness. Trump’s “fast track” approach to deportations has earned him several opponents, including the federal courts which sought to block them.
“A lot of Americans regardless of political persuasion, regardless of political ideology, really found [Trump’s policies] fundamentally problematic and abhorrent to separate infants from their mothers,” Salusky said in reference to Trump’s 2018 family separation policy. Fast forward to 2026, and many of the same concerns exist.
“It has an impact on people’s psychology and raises dissonance or fundamental discomfort about individual’s values,” she continued. “Versus other administrations where there was maybe a more humane approach.”
Trump has attempted to build a wall at the southern border, establish the notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center in Florida and even launch the Trump Gold Card— fast tracking immigration applications for those willing to pay $1 million. Polls show Americans believe Trump is doing too much to target undocumented immigrants, and the numbers show his efforts aren’t really paying off.
We previously told you the U.S. reported negative net migration under Trump 2.0, with more people leaving the country than coming in. In 2025, most deportations were initiated Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as opposed to ICE, suggesting ICE occupation in cities like Minneapolis aren’t as effective as Trump claimed. Trump’s abysmal approval rating also suggests more Americans are having doubts.
“There’s a huge amount of anxiety and fear that’s induced, and part of it is you don’t know if you’re next,” Salusky added. “If that could happen to an ER nurse [like Pretti] and a poet [like Good], who else can it happen to?”
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