Hillary Clinton claimed Democrats had a more ‘humane’ immigration track record. History says otherwise
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Speaking at a panel on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton chimed in on the topic of global migration and border enforcement.
“More people were deported under my husband [Bill Clinton] and Barack Obama without killing American citizens and without putting children into detention camps than were in the first Trump term or this first year of Trump’s second term,” she said. Some in the crowd applauded.
“There is a legitimate reason to have a debate about things like migration,” Clinton added. “It went too far, it’s been disruptive and destabilizing, and it needs to be fixed in a humane way with secure borders that don’t torture and kill people.”
A hawkish border take from a lifelong centrist Democrat? She must be running again.
Personally, I take everything Clinton says with a grain of salt ever since her team claimed that she was just like my abuela during her failed 2016 presidential campaign. Naturally, I was dubious of her assertion that the immigration policies of former Presidents Clinton and Obama were humane, especially when history shows otherwise.
So I pulled some receipts!
Bill Clinton
Perhaps no other president in the history of the United States has contributed more to the country’s current detention and deportation apparatus than the only commander in chief to hail from Arkansas.
In 1994, the Clinton administration implemented an immigration enforcement strategy known as “prevention through deterrence,” which resulted in miles of fence built along the U.S.-Mexico border and increased personnel at major points of entry — “Operation Gatekeeper,” which targeted the San Diego sector, was part of this effort. The idea was to push unauthorized migration into unfriendly terrain in hopes that the hostile conditions would deter people from crossing. That didn’t happen. People still tried to cross.
“One unintended consequence of this enforcement posture and the shift in migration patterns has been an increase in the number of migrant deaths each year; on average 200 migrants died each year in the early 1990s, compared with 472 migrant deaths in 2005,” a 2009 report by the Congressional Research Service found.
Being forced to traverse the Sonoran desert in search of a better life isn’t exactly the textbook definition of “humane.”
Two years later, Clinton signed into law the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, significantly increasing the number of people eligible for deportation while also making it harder for undocumented individuals to obtain legal status. IIRIRA also created the 287(g) program, which allows federal immigration officials to deputize local and state law enforcement agencies to detain undocumented immigrants. During his second term, Donald Trump has significantly expanded the program.
To learn more about the legacy of IIRIRA, I recommend this comprehensive explainer published by Vox in 2016.
Barack Obama
Contrary to what Hillary Clinton claimed in Munich, Obama did put children into detention camps.
In 2014, the number of unaccompanied minors coming from the Northern Triangle of Central America (El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala) significantly increased. According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s own data, the department apprehended 68,445 unaccompanied children under the age of 18 during the 2014 fiscal year. In 2013, that figure was 38,759 apprehensions.
So dire was the situation that The Times editorial board deemed it to be “a humanitarian issue that is beyond the power of a single government to control.”
It wasn’t just unaccompanied minors. Adults with children also showed up at the border seeking refuge. In turn, the Obama administration rushed to build detention centers to hold families that had arrived illegally. Among these was the South Texas Family Residential Center, also known as the Dilley Immigration Processing Center.
The Dilley detention center, which is operated by for-profit prison contractor CoreCivic, was closed in 2024, but was reopened in 2025 by the Trump administration. Dilley has been in the news a lot lately. It’s where Liam Conejo Ramos — the 5-year-old boy whose picture went viral — and his father were taken after being detained in Minnesota.
Earlier this month, ProPublica published a troubling report about conditions inside the detainment center based on letters it received from children inside Dilley. They describe the poor medical access and rancid food they’ve been given, the despair and anguish they’ve felt.
“I have friends, school, and family here in the United States,” 13-year-old Gustavo Santiago wrote of his experience. “To this day, I don’t know what we did wrong to be detained. I feel like I’ll never get out of here. I just ask that you don’t forget about us.”
Thanks, Obama. Dilley is as much a part of his legacy as the well-earned moniker “deporter in chief.”
Joe Biden
Clinton didn’t mention him in her comments, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Joe Biden.
During his presidential campaign, Biden promised that he would bring “human dignity” to the U.S. immigration system. After taking office, he continued Donald Trump’s policy of invoking Title 42, an obscure public health statute from 1944 that allows the president to deny entry into the United States to foreign nationals who might spread a communicable disease (remember COVID-19?), to immediately expel people into Mexico.
Biden’s usage of Title 42 was bad for immigrants but good for those seeking to exploit them.
“The consequence of Title 42 is that this is essentially a gold rush for human smugglers,” immigration lawyer Andrew Free told The Times in 2021.
The Biden administration also gave us the following image from September 2021, which shows a horse-mounted Border Patrol agent violently pulling on the shirt of a Haitian refugee near Del Rio, Texas.
As I wrote back then, the image perfectly encapsulated the violence undocumented migrants crossing the border have faced over the last three decades.
Hillary Clinton is not wrong to call out Donald Trump’s horrific and cruel immigration enforcement efforts. And credit where credit is due: No U.S. citizen has been publicly killed for defending their immigrant neighbors. But if that’s where the bar is, then it’s on the floor, and as history has shown, Democrat presidents have long struggled to clear it.
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Stories we read this week that we think you should read
Unless otherwise noted, stories below were published by the Los Angeles Times.
Politics and immigration
- Senators decry surge in deaths at ICE detention facilities, citing poor medical care
- Student anti-ICE walkouts: Some officials praise activism, others dole out detention
- Activists celebrate as immigration agents depart Terminal Island. ‘The people kicked them out’
- Rep. Jim McGovern introduces bill to end “counterproductive” U.S. embargo against Cuba
- How ICE insulted 28 Mexican immigrants who died in a 1948 plane crash
- Column: Trump’s deportations are losing him the ‘Mexican Beverly Hills’
- How a planned Disney World vacation turned into four months in immigration detention [ProPublica]
The Americas
- Venezuela’s oil industry is in ruins. Reviving it won’t be easy
- Mexican officials feared El Paso airspace closure signaled U.S. incursion into Mexico
- Opinion: What ‘America’ meant before 1776, and who ‘Americans’ are today
- ‘Many will die’: Cuba’s health system is on the verge of collapse, doctors warn [Miami Herald]
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- Gustavo Dudamel delivers his ‘love letter to L.A.’ in his final summer at the Hollywood Bowl
- The 10 best picture nominees’ final pitch to voters
- The poet laureate with a bold plan to get Boyle Heights students into the woods
- How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Sheila E.
- Tiny iconic soccer moments made with gum wrappers scream ‘Fútbol Is Life’ at LACMA
- Is it worth it? Traveling for Marc Anthony’s ‘Vegas… My Way!’ residency [Remezcla]
Food
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- The taqueria that gave us soft tacos set to become L.A. historic site
- Recipe: Santa Canela’s Fall-in-Love Wedding Cookies
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Perspectives
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Ideas expressed in the piece
Hillary Clinton’s claim that Democratic presidents deported more people without detaining children or killing citizens misrepresents the historical record of immigration enforcement under Democratic administrations. The article contends that Clinton and Obama oversaw the construction and operation of immigration detention infrastructure that has caused substantial harm to migrants and asylum seekers.
Bill Clinton’s administration established foundational policies that created the modern deportation apparatus, including the “prevention through deterrence” strategy that pushed unauthorized migrants into dangerous terrain and contributed to increased migrant deaths. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 significantly expanded deportation eligibility while restricting legal pathways, and created the 287(g) program that allows local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration law—a program expanded during Trump’s second term.
Barack Obama’s administration detained unaccompanied children and families despite humanitarian rhetoric, contradicting Clinton’s assertion that children were not placed in detention camps. The article points to significant increases in unaccompanied minor apprehensions during Obama’s tenure and the establishment of family detention centers like the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, which housed children in conditions documented as inadequate by ProPublica.
Joe Biden continued restrictive immigration policies inherited from the Trump administration, including the use of Title 42 to expel migrants to Mexico, effectively creating what immigration advocates described as a “gold rush for human smugglers.” The persistence of deportation and enforcement practices across Democratic and Republican administrations reflects a broader failure to establish genuinely humane immigration policies.
Different views on the topic
Clinton’s assertion that more people were deported under her husband and Barack Obama without killing American citizens or detaining children in camps reflects meaningful distinctions in how Democratic administrations approached immigration enforcement compared to Trump. More people were deported under Clinton and Obama’s administrations than under Trump’s first term, suggesting higher enforcement capacity under Democratic leadership[2].
Obama’s deportation policies prioritized targeting individuals convicted of crimes and those considered national security threats, particularly during his final years in office, which differed substantially from Trump’s approach of categorizing all undocumented individuals as deportable[1][3]. This distinction reflects a more selective enforcement strategy designed to minimize collateral impact on communities.
The data on deportations reveals that while total numbers were higher under Democratic presidents, the methods and priorities differed significantly. Under Clinton’s two terms, approximately 93 percent of deportations were “returns” conducted at the border, whereas under Obama, the focus shifted to formal removals with lasting legal consequences[4]. During Trump’s first term, removals became less discriminate after he eliminated the Department of Homeland Security’s deportation priority categories[3].
Obama’s implementation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in 2012, which provided temporary protection to undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children, represented a protective policy measure that contrasted with Trump’s subsequent efforts to restrict the program[3]. This policy reflected a humanitarian component to Democratic immigration enforcement that distinguished it from other administrations.
