Donald Trump is wrong. Joe Biden doesn’t have an ‘immunity from deportation’ policy.

After police said a Georgia nursing student was killed by a Venezuelan immigrant, criticism over President Joe Biden’s immigration policies intensified. 

Laken Riley, 22, was killed Feb. 22 while on a jog at the University of Georgia. The suspect, an immigrant from Venezuela, entered the U.S. illegally in September 2022, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said. 

Former President Donald Trump says Riley’s death is evidence of what he termed "Biden migrant crime," although studies show that immigrants in the U.S. illegally are less likely than people born in the U.S. to commit crimes.

During a recent campaign rally in Rome, Georgia, Trump cited Riley’s killing to condemn what he characterized as Biden’s deportation policies. 

"Biden has implemented a formal policy that illegal aliens who intrude into the United States are granted immunity from deportation," Trump said. "Thus, when this monster showed up at our border, he was set free immediately under the program Crooked Joe created — I call it, 'Free To Kill.'"

Trump did not clarify what policies he was referring to, and his campaign did not answer our request for comment.

ICE told PolitiFact that murder suspect Jose Ibarra was given a temporary entry into the country via a process known as parole, allowing him to be released into the U.S. to await further immigration proceedings. But that’s not evidence that Biden has a policy granting people immunity from deportation, immigration experts said. 

The U.S. has expelled, removed or returned people out of the U.S. around 3.8 million times under Biden, according to PolitiFact’s analysis of Department of Homeland Security data.

On Biden’s first day in office, the DHS published a memo pausing the removals of certain people illegally in the U.S. for 100 days. But federal courts blocked the pause.

The memo also acknowledged that because of resource constraints, and increased illegal border crossings, resources should be directed to the border and removals should be prioritized for people who threatened national security or public safety or who entered the U.S. after Nov. 1, 2020. 

"While resources should be allocated to the priorities enumerated above, nothing in this memorandum prohibits the apprehension or detention of individuals unlawfully in the United States who are not identified as priorities herein," the memo added.

The memo would not have applied to Ibarra, who entered the U.S. in 2022. 

In September 2021, DHS released a second memo detailing similar guidelines, instructing ICE to prioritize the removal of people who have crossed the border in recent years or who threaten public safety. Courts also halted those guidelines in 2021, but they were reinstated in 2023 after a Supreme Court decision.

The Supreme Court said that no administration has had enough resources to arrest or remove all people illegally crossing the border. The federal government therefore had to prioritize the use of available resources, the court said.

"It may be that Biden's choice means that certain criminal offenders will not get deported," said Rick Su, a University of North Carolina Chapel Hill immigration law professor. "But it is not really granting any legal ‘immunity.’ And criminal sentences are still served."

Many people who cross the border illegally cannot be immediately deported, but not because of a Biden administration policy. Immigration law, congressional appropriations and foreign policy all factor in what happens to a person at the border. 

Featured Fact-check

Nancy Pelosi

stated on November 9, 2024 in an interview

“Fewer people came in under President Biden than came under Donald Trump.”

Under immigration law, when people cross the border illegally they can be quickly deported without a formal proceeding in immigration court, unless they’re requesting asylum. That rapid deportation is known as expedited removal. Asylum officers must determine whether migrants have a credible case for seeking asylum.

"Even those folks, seeking asylum, are certainly not ‘immune’ from deportation and must prove that they meet the standard for either asylum protection, withholding of removal protection, or protection under the Convention Against Torture, in order to remain in the United States," said  Lindsay Harris, the International Human Rights Clinic director at the University of San Francisco. 

The volume of people coming to the border and the limited resources appropriated by Congress mean the government must release people to await formal immigration court proceedings,  Theresa Cardinal Brown, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s senior adviser for immigration and border policy, said in a February interview with Katie Couric. A backlog of millions of immigration court cases means it could take years for these new cases to be resolved.

People’s nationality also affects what happens to them at the border. 

Under Biden, people are arriving at the border from more countries than in the past, the Migration Policy Institute wrote in a January report. And to deport people, the U.S. needs a working relationship with their countries of origin.

For example, because of fraught diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Venezuela, Venezuelans cannot be easily deported. Ibarra crossed the U.S.-Mexico border before October 2003, when Venezuela did not accept its own deported nationals and before Mexico began accepting a limited number of deported Venezuelans. People from countries that don’t cooperate with U.S. removals must be released because federal law prohibits indefinite detention.

"That is not immunity for deportation," said Sarah Sherman-Stokes, associate director for Boston University’s Immigrants' Rights and Human Trafficking Program. "It may be a temporary delay in deportation but those people who are slated for deportation and who the administration is unable to remove are under surveillance."

The number of people reaching the border has been rising, stressing resources. That has led the Biden administration to apply different processes to quickly move people out of Border Patrol processing centers. 

"Due to limited resources, DHS cannot respond to all immigration violations or remove all individuals who are determined to be in the U.S. without lawful immigration status," a September 2022 Government Accountability Office report said.

One of these processes, used in fiscal years 2021 and 2022, was called "parole + ATD." Under that process, people were enrolled in the Alternatives to Detention program, which uses technology such as GPS tracking, ankle monitors or a smartphone app to track people’s locations. They also were paroled into the country and required to appear at an ICE office a few weeks later to officially begin their removal proceedings in immigration court.

People who threatened national security or public safety or presented an "unmitigable flight risk," could not be enrolled in the program, according to a CBP memo. A federal court blocked the program in March 2023. 

But these processes don’t exempt people from deportation, immigration experts said. 

People under parole "can be deported if they affirmatively do something that is deportable, like commit an ‘aggravated felony’ or a ‘crime involving moral turpitude,’" such as murder or rape, Su said.

"Parole is not immunity from deportation," Sherman-Stokes said. "Parole provides a temporary entry into the United States, but people on parole are placed into deportation proceedings and have to make a claim for why they should be able to remain in the United States with authorization."

Trump said, "Biden has implemented a formal policy that illegal aliens who intrude into the United States are granted immunity from deportation."

The U.S. has expelled, removed or returned people on about 3.8 million occasions during Biden’s administration, PolitiFact’s analysis of DHS data shows.

And immigration experts told PolitiFact that DHS’ priorities for deportation and processes under the Biden administration intended to quickly move people out of Border Patrol processing centers are not giving people immunity from deportation. 

We rate Trump’s claim False.