U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during an event at The Villages Charter School at The Villages, Florida, U.S., May 1, 2026. REUTERS_Nathan Howard
President Donald Trump is reportedly using the same “book cooking” to count immigrant deportations that he and Republicans denounced in his predecessor, President Barack Obama.
“The White House plans to start counting people who were quickly removed after crossing the border in its deportation statistics, a change that will put it closer to its goal of one million deportations a year,” reported Brittany Gibson from Axios. Even though Trump and his Republican supporters claimed that Obama was guilty of distorting his record when he used this method, White House Border Czar Tom Homan told the Washington Examiner Trump plans on counting deportations by combining ICE’s work in America’s interior with Customs and Border Protection’s returning people who were caught crossing the borders.
"Deportations are over 800,000, counting the Border Patrol too. We're trying to do the same thing we did during the Obama administration, looking at the numbers, pull the numbers together," Homan told the Washington Examiner. Yet as Axios noted, then-House Judiciary Chair Lamar Smith (R-Texas) slammed the tactic in a 2012 press release as “dishonest to count illegal immigrants apprehended by the Border Patrol along the border as ICE removals.”
At the time, the committee demanded Obama provide internal agency documents to determine the truth about the forced removals.
"It seems like President Obama is trying to trick the American people into thinking he is enforcing our immigration laws,” Smith claimed at the time. “But no amount of spin can cover up the facts.”
Greg Bovino, who previously served as commander-at-large for Customs and Border Protection, has publicly accused Homan of not being up to his new job.
“He sounds super tough,” Bovino wrote in a post to X. “But zoom in. All he’s actually promising is rounding up the ones who already have known criminal records.” Homan, he argued, “is denying reality.”
Bovino then argued"100 million" other undocumented immigrants "laughing at us” because of Homan’s approach "staying right where they are… until they rob or kill you," adding that mass deportations are necessary and “anything less is just political theater.”
While Bovino did not offer any data to back up his assertions, there are others who argue Trump’s immigration policies are failing. Further suggesting that Trump has not managed to meet his immigration goals.