6 times top Democrats warned against illegal immigration, called for deportations

By Jon Brown, Christian Post Reporter Thursday, February 05, 2026

3. Barack Obama: 'If you're a criminal, you'll be deported'

While he was still a U.S. senator representing Illinois, former President Barack Obama warned that the swell of unskilled illegal immigration to the U.S. overly burdens the working class.

"The number of immigrants added to the labor force every year is of a magnitude not seen in this country for over a century," he wrote in The Audacity of Hope, which was published in 2006.

"If this huge influx of mostly low-skill workers provides some benefits to the economy as a whole — especially by keeping our workforce young, in contrast to an increasingly geriatric Europe and Japan — it also threatens to depress further the wages of blue-collar Americans and put strains on an already overburdened safety net," he continued.

When he was president, Obama echoed Bill Clinton in a 2014 speech he delivered on immigration that boasted about the rising number of deportations under his administration.

"Even as we are a nation of immigrants, we're also a nation of laws. Undocumented workers broke our immigration laws, and I believe that they must be held accountable — especially those who may be dangerous. That's why, over the past six years, deportations of criminals are up 80 percent," Obama said at the time.

"And that's why we're going to keep focusing enforcement resources on actual threats to our security. Felons, not families. Criminals, not children. Gang members, not a mom who's working hard to provide for her kids. We'll prioritize, just like law enforcement does every day," he continued.

In the same speech, Obama also called for a measured approach to immigration enforcement, but expressed a hardline stance regarding illegal immigrants who have committed a crime.

"What I'm describing is accountability — a common-sense, middle-ground approach: If you meet the criteria, you can come out of the shadows and get right with the law. If you're a criminal, you'll be deported. If you plan to enter the U.S. illegally, your chances of getting caught and sent back just went up."

There were approximately 5.3 million deportations under the Obama administration, counting both interior and border cases, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.