A former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief has condemned a wire service report this week that claimed President Joe Biden has recently deported more illegal immigrants than former President Donald Trump.

In fact, checking a Reuters report that was given top play on liberal media websites and the Drudge Report, former ICE chief of staff Jon Feere said the story mixed forced deportations with those “pushed back” at the border to make it look like the border blundering administration was taking forceful action.

“The Reuters article seems to be an attempt to help President Biden,” said Feere, now with the Center for Immigration Studies, an immigration think tank that opposes illegal immigration and promotes legal pathways to the U.S.

While the report portrayed Biden as the new deporter-in-chief, the immigration expert said in his report that the numbers are not typically added in deportation reports.

“To understand how Reuters makes the claim on Biden’s deportations, it’s necessary to understand the difference between a ‘removal’ conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and a ‘return’ conducted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Generally, when we talk about deportations, we’re talking about a removal — an arrest of an illegal alien processed by ICE and deported back to the alien’s home country. When we talk about returns, we’re generally talking about people apprehended near the border who are quickly pushed back — returned — to Mexico within a matter of hours. And these returns are often of the same people attempting to enter illegally multiple times,” he wrote.

“It can get a little more complicated than that, but generally speaking, returns are not removals or deportations,” he added.

Feere said the numbers show that the administration has dropped the ball on deportations, especially of criminal illegal immigrants, as most other stories have reported.

“The evidence is clear: The Biden administration has dramatically decreased deportations and protected criminal aliens. This is obvious to anyone paying attention to the immigration policies under the Biden administration, and should be obvious to anyone in the media reporting on immigration matters.”

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He continued, “Media that reports anything to the contrary only further undermines the credibility of journalism. If journalists wanted to help protect the American people against dangerous federal policies and politicians, they would be exposing the fallout of the Biden administration’s agenda and pressing Biden’s political appointees to defend their records,” he wrote.

His full report can be found here.