President Donald Trump's immigration policies have grown increasingly unpopular, with two-thirds of the United States saying the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers have gone too far, according to Marist Poll.

At the same time, social media users argue that Trump is being unfairly singled out. They claim former President Barack Obama oversaw equally harsh enforcement — sometimes citing the number of detainees who died in ICE custody or the total number of deportations carried out.

DW Fact check examined the claims and the data to determine whether the two administrations are truly comparable.

Deaths in ICE custody higher under Trump

Claim: A social media user says there were 56 deaths in ICE custody during the two terms of Democratic US President Barack Obama (2009-2017). Some users insinuated the numbers are similar to deaths under Republican Donald Trump and complained about  alleged double standards in public perception. 

One post on X with 1,1 million views for example, says "OBAMA ERA: 56 DIE IN ICE CUSTODY, AMERICA SAYS WHATEVER. 56 people died in ICE custody under Obama. What happened you may ask? No riots. No cities on fire. No 'Obama is Hitler' banners. Trump does raids and suddenly it's the end of civilization." 

Is this comparison to Trump accurate?

DW Fact check: Misleading

The number of 56 deaths under Obama is not entirely correct. The figure of 56 deaths comes from the 2016 report ACLU/DWN/NIJC report "Fatal Neglect: How ICE Ignores Deaths in Detention". But the report covers only through early 2016, before Obama's final year in office, which ended only at the beginning of 2017. According to a list from ICE, a total of 67 detainees died during Obama's eight years of presidency (2009–2017).

The number of deaths in ICE custody are already higher under Trump, as the infographic below shows. So far, the count is at 83 deaths.

Trump's second term shows a particularly sharp rise. ICE counts deaths by fiscal year (October to September), but looking at the first 12 months of Trump's second term, there were 37 deaths.

The number of deaths accumulated in the first year of Trump's second term is comparable to the number of deaths accumulated under Obama in four years.

Immigration law scholar Cesar Cuauhtemoc Garcia Hernandez told DW: "The Trump administration is currently on track to see the largest number of deaths by people who are detained by ICE."

The Ohio State University law professor attributes this to more people being detained and kept for longer periods.

Deaths in detention are separate from deaths involving ICE enforcement actions. In January 2026, two high-profile ICE shootings of US citizens sparked a public outcry and lead to a drop in support for ICE.

Did Obama deport more people than Trump?

Claim: "People fail to realize that Obama and many other prior presidents have had the exact same stance on deportations," wrote this user in a post on X. Many social media users point out that Obama was responsible for many more deportations than Trump and therefore had the same immigration stance.

DW Fact check: Misleading

During the Obama administration's two terms, ICE deported about 3.1 million people, peaking with 407,000 deportations in 2012. In Trump's first term, he deported 932,000 people, peaking with 269,000 deportations in 2019, based on data from Syracuse University's TRAC (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.) 

It's not possible to calculate exactly how many people Trump has had deported in his second term, because the administration has stopped updating federal dashboards; however, experts estimate around 300,000. 

At first glance, Obama deported far more people — but this overlooks a crucial distinction.

Interior deportations vs. border deportations

Experts emphasize that combining border‑related deportations with interior removals obscures the differences between administrations. 

David Hausman, co-director of the Deportation Data Project, explains: "A lot of the confusion comes from lumping together deportations that start with an arrest at the border and deportations that start within the United States." 

If you look at just the second category — interior deportations — the comparison changes notably. Interior deportations more than quadrupled in the fall of 2025, compared to the average during Biden's last year in office, according to an analysis by the Deportation Data Project.

Hausman says: "At least by the second half of 2025, the Trump administration was deporting more people from the interior than any administration in this century."

Targeting people in communities rather than jails

The vast majority of Obama's interior deportations started with transfers from jails or prisons — meaning they involved people who had been convicted of crimes. That being said, the Obama administration used a very broad definition of "criminal," also including people with minor traffic infractions.

Under Trump, ICE has focused far more on people without criminal convictions and relied on "street arrests," targeting people in communities rather than jails. 

He's also increased interior deportations by revoking legal protected status for populations from countries like Somalia, Haiti, and Venezuela.

The other reason Trump's deportation numbers pale in comparison to Obama's is a decline in border crossings. The share of migrants reaching the US border with Mexico has dropped dramatically, hitting its lowest level in a half-century this year, according to the Pew Research Center. 

The decline began in late 2024, before Trump took office, due to President Biden's diplomatic agreements with Mexico and Central American countries aimed at increasing border enforcement.

Obama and Trump: Not 'doing all the same things'

Claim: "Here is ICE under Obama in 2016 doing all the same things," the user included in their caption. This sweeping claim on X, along with others like, "The positions you now call 'far right' were vanilla Democrat talking points back when Obama was president" suggests that Obama and Trump have similar stances on immigration.

DW Fact check: Misleading

Hiroshi Motomura, co-director of the UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy and a former Obama advisor, notes: "I think of them as fundamentally different."

Obama's approach was strict border enforcement — and different from what a number of people now say on social media, he did receive criticism for that.

He was more lenient towards immigrants already living within the country. He famously said he wanted to go after "felons, not families" and "criminals, not children" in a 2014 White House address.

He also created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, protecting the children of undocumented immigrants from deportation.

Trump, on the other hand, has made it more difficult to legally immigrate to the US, increasing fees, slowing down the processing, and intensifying security checks.

Motomura adds: "In contrast to every US president for a hundred years, the Trump administration has been skeptical or even hostile to what we would call legal migration."

There are a number of other key differences in their approaches. 

Trump has dramatically expanded the scale of immigration enforcement. His administration multiplied the enforcement budget, increased the country's detention capacity, struck deals with other countries to allow for third-country deportations, and fired career immigration judges, replacing them with "deportation judges."

Trump's administration has also sent federal agents into cities, normalized arrests in courthouses and deployed rhetoric such as "invasion" and "emergency," in a stark departure from his predecessors, according to Motomura.

Edited by: Uta Steinwehr, Rachel Baig