"I was extremely surprised to find out that based on ICE’s annual reports, which are still up, Biden’s administration deported far more people than Trump’s did..."
I think this is an essentially meaningless number until you also include the total number of illegals that were let in during the same period for each administration.
The more important number is how many people attempted crossing, which jumped significantly during Biden. This probably has something to do with their phenomenally cratered economies during COVID, multiple destabilized governments in LatAm, and severe climate migration.
That's a big part of why the Biden administration (on day one) proposed a bill that created a large economic development grant for LatAm while also modernizing border security.
No, 85% of apprehensions don't result in release into the country. That is a number that you'll have a hard time substantiating. Allegedly Mayorkas said it to the CBP union, according to the CBP union.
Below is an actual analysis of actual data from the right-leaning Cato Institute. The real number is somewhere in the 40-50% range and has been stable through most administrations (and, shockingly, Trump released more illegal immigrants into the country than Biden).
In addition to letting immigrants into the country at a higher rate, Trump also specifically slowed down deportation processing for violent immigrants, keeping them in the country, free (as is required by the Constitution's Equal Protection and Due Process clauses) for longer.
When trying to understand non-localized, large scale phenomena, yeah, you should defer to data and statistics. That’s literally why we invented them. We discovered over and over that people’s intuitions about what they were seeing were completely unreliable.
Why do you think statistics exists and all this machinery for capturing and processing data?
Statistics often exist to bamboozle and provide false and misleading context to otherwise extremely unpopular policy.
In this case, for example, to justify actions (or lack thereof) that will sway voter demographics in your favor over the medium term.
I think this is an essentially meaningless number until you also include the total number of illegals that were let in during the same period for each administration.