Currently, the federal government uses two different terms for when it apprehends an unauthorized immigrant and expels him or her from the country. There are "removals," which involve a formal court order. And then there are "returns," which do not. In my article, I used "deportations" to refer to removals only — for reasons explained below.
This distinction matters a fair bit. The Obama administration is on pace for more removals than any president in history. But there have been far fewer returns under Obama than under George W. Bush (chart via The Federalist,* which counts both "removals" and "returns" as "deportations"):

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