WASHINGTON (TNND) -- The National News Desk looked into how previous presidents handled mass deportations as President-elect Donald Trump's plans take shape.
Part of immigration enforcement is removing people who entered the U.S. illegally.
The incoming administration will be taking a different approach to immigration in the coming weeks.
"Let me be clear. There is going to be a mass deportation because we just finished a mass illegal immigration crisis on the border. If we don't do it, what is the option? Let them stay? Because if we let them stay, you'll never fix the border," said incoming border czar Tom Homan last month.
President Barack Obama also took the accountability approach.
"Even as we are a nation of immigrants we are also a nation of laws. Undocumented workers broke our immigration laws. I believe they must be held accountable," Obama said.
To this day, Obama holds the record for the most deportations known as "Deporter in Chief" by critics in the Democratic party.
Obama removed 1.6 million undocumented immigrants in his first term and 1.5 million in his second term. Trump had 1.2 million illegal immigrants deported during his first term.
President Joe Biden removed 682,000 people.
Those numbers get complicated when TNND looked at how the U.S. Department of Homeland Security defines deportations.
Deportations "removals" only refers to those led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol.
Others are repatriated as returns, which includes those who go voluntarily. However, there are also expulsions under the public health order, Title 42, which brings Trump's numbers up to 1.4 million and Biden's up to 3.4 million.
"We are devoted to providing humanitarian relief for those who qualify it is one of our country's proudest traditions," U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said.
On his first day in office, Biden signed executive orders effectively undoing some of Trump's immigration policies, which many now cite as a key factor in the Biden administration having the largest number of migrants coming into the United States in the country's history and even surpassing the mass migration from Europe in the days of Ellis Island.
"Day after day, the Biden administration is allowing more and more migrants to enter the United States, despite the fact that that vast majority of these individuals have no legal basis to be here," Texas Senator John Cornyn said.
There are major concerns from critics about the mass deportation the Trump administration is planning, predicting tens of thousands of workers may not show up for jobs in agriculture, manufacturing and construction.
A worker shortage could mean that the prices of goods could skyrocket amid high already high prices.