Years ago, José saw America from above – cleaning windows of skyscrapers in New York. He held several jobs since entering the country illegally in 2008, often afraid to out himself by speaking Spanish.
José says he fled to the United States from El Salvador as a teenager after he faced violence from gangs, which he didn’t want to join. So strong was the call of the American dream, he says, that after he crossed the southern border and U.S. officials flew him home, José crossed a second time.
Now, José sees America at a distance once again. He voluntarily left this summer to avoid detention. He and his family, now in Europe, plan to start a new life there through legal pathways. Like other immigrants interviewed for this story, he asked the Monitor to omit his full name for privacy and security concerns.
Why We Wrote This
Part of the Trump administration’s immigration clampdown involves encouraging unauthorized immigrants to “self-deport” by offering cash and other incentives. A growing number are deciding to leave the U.S. on their own.
José, whom the Monitor met through his attorney, found no clear way to legalize his status in the U.S., though his wife and 8-year-old daughter are citizens. He watched as President Donald Trump ramped up a nationwide deportation campaign, including sending men to a notorious Salvadoran prison. He mulled his family’s future. Like José, millions of immigrants – with and without lawful status – are thinking through whether to leave on their own.
“The American dream was a lie,” José says. “I don’t have to work 72 hours a week.” Not only does he have less stress since leaving, he says, “Nobody’s hunting me anymore.”
The Department of Homeland Security has spent over half a year urging unauthorized immigrants like him to leave, offering travel assistance, a $1,000 “exit bonus,” and forgiveness of immigration-related fines if they use a certain app. A public relations campaign by top government officials, and posters in the nation’s immigration courts, emphasize a call to “self-deport.” It’s part of the overall message that the U.S. is inhospitable to people who don’t have proper documents.
“If you don’t [leave], we will find you. And we will deport you,” Secretary Kristi Noem said in a DHS ad campaign this past winter.
The government’s call to self-deport has raised fear and confusion in the homes of some immigrants, along with difficult questions about where they belong: to the original country they left or to the U.S., where they’ve made a life. Their advocates warn of unknowns – such as how data will be used – if they use a promoted government app to schedule a free departure. Immigration enforcement proponents take a different view, praising President Trump’s “Project Homecoming” campaign as a way to save money on detention costs.
For all the anti-immigrant campaigns throughout U.S. history, most people have not “packed up and left the country,” says Adam Goodman, a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago and author of “The Deportation Machine.”
Yet, under this administration, he says, “I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything that is so coordinated, in terms of orchestration, of encouraging people to self-deport and then documenting their departure.”
How many immigrants are leaving the U.S.?
Homeland Security this week said that more than 2 million unauthorized immigrants have left the United States during the second Trump term. Most – an estimated 1.6 million – are self-deportations, said the government, while the rest are deportations. An estimated 14 million unauthorized immigrants lived in the U.S. as of 2023.
The administration has not published monthly data on deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, instead issuing periodic press statements. Last month, the administration cited a 1.6 million figure on all unauthorized immigrant departures so far, from an estimate by the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank promoting reduced immigration. While it’s difficult to discern the full scope of departures, given data limitations, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center published a similar estimated decline for the immigrant population overall.
The U.S. has used coercive campaigns to oust immigrants for more than a century, says Dr. Goodman. A “repatriation” effort to remove Mexicans – including Mexican Americans – emerged during the Great Depression. In some cases, local, state, and federal agencies incentivized departures by paying for travel tickets, a precursor to today, he says.
In March, the U.S. government repurposed an app called CBP One that the Biden administration had used to schedule appointments for asylum-seekers and other migrants as a way to enter the country lawfully. Conservatives argued that the process enabled a back door for otherwise illegal immigration. Now called CBP Home, the app is touted by the Trump administration as a way for unauthorized immigrants to document their intent to depart voluntarily, avoiding fines and arrest.
In May, Homeland Security said an initial “voluntary charter flight” of 64 people took off to Honduras and Colombia.
The self-deportation campaign is “genius,” says Scott Mechkowski, a retired Immigration and Customs Enforcement official. Funding voluntary travel home is cheaper than “the cost of detaining somebody – and then removing them,” he says.
Unauthorized immigrants want to avoid detention and deportation, advocates say. Still, “There’s a lot of fear around using the app” to leave, says Christina Wilkes, an immigration attorney in Maryland.
Part of that fear stems from confusion around how the app works. A DHS webpage says noncitizens requesting assistance will have their departures arranged within an estimated 21 days. It’s unclear whether someone who alerts the government, but leaves on their own, faces the same deadline. There are also questions around how their data will be used, including if someone tries to reenter in the future. Typically, unauthorized immigrants who want to return to the U.S. lawfully can face yearslong bans.
José filled out his information on CBP Home and had an in-person appointment to take his photo and fingerprints. After weeks passed without further instructions, José bought his own ticket abroad. He couldn’t verify his departure through the app, and says he never received the $1,000.
The app is “very confusing,” says José.
“Tens of thousands” of unauthorized immigrants have used the CBP Home app, according to Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary for public affairs at DHS. The department has not directly answered several questions sent by the Monitor – including how many people have received travel assistance and the exit bonus.
Brothers decide
Many immigrants, like Santos, aren’t ready to leave.
The college-aged construction worker says he crossed the southern border illegally, years ago, to avoid the cost and bureaucracy of a visa. Santos says he used to work for a Trump-supporting dairy farmer without days off.
At the start of the new administration, his brother returned to Mexico. That departure was “very difficult for me,” says Santos, now alone in the United States.
“I have friends and acquaintances, but it’s not the same as having your family here,” he says.
Santos says he fears deportation, and now leads a “more hidden life” in which he sticks close to work and home. Staying is a financial decision.
“Someone from the family needs to stay here and subsidize expenses in Mexico,” including care for his parents, he says. Santos has been seeking a way to legalize his status through a special visa.
When finding a job in the U.S. isn’t so easy
Some Haitians have decided to return home, despite gang violence and a political crisis, because they can’t support themselves here, says Sabyne Denaud, senior program and contract manager at the International Institute of New England.
“Back home, they wonder about safety. But here, they wonder about housing. They wonder about jobs,” she says. The Trump administration has also moved to end temporary legal status for Haitians and Venezuelans, cases that face ongoing litigation.
Gina flew back to Haiti on her own a few months ago, without notifying the U.S. government. She didn’t see any other option.
Her cousin sponsored her to come to New York last year through a Biden-era parole program that offered work permits. But her cousin’s family excluded her from meals, she says, leaving Gina to seek food on the street. A friend recommended Massachusetts, a hub of the Haitian diaspora. Even there, Gina struggled to find a job.
“I couldn’t sleep at home because I was very stressed out,” Gina says in Haitian Creole through an interpreter. She also learned she was pregnant with her first child.
Gina, whom the Monitor met through a group that helped her in the U.S., says she feels safe in her coastal town away from the capital, Port-au-Prince, even though she calls the overall situation in her country “very, very bad.” She wants to find a job, and make sure her child “has a good life.”
A previous effort yielded little results
Under President George W. Bush, ICE tried to incentivize those exits through a pilot program known as Scheduled Departure.
The agency had spent significant time and money to identify people who had removal orders, but hadn’t left, according to Jim Hayes, a former ICE official who says he came up with the pilot program in 2008.
Scheduled Departure was meant to test ICE critics’ theory that the agency could deport people in a manner “less painful, less difficult for the people who were in the country illegally,” he says.
It didn’t attract many takers. During the campaign, which lasted three weeks, NPR reported at the time, only eight people took advantage. Roughly half a million people had been eligible.
The current administration’s self-deportation campaign is part of a “comprehensive enforcement strategy” that differs from the Bush approach in part through its use of technology, says Mr. Hayes, now vice president at Guidepost Solutions, a risk management firm.
As he tries to put down new roots in Europe, José says he’s shielded his 8-year-old daughter from much of his immigration saga so far.
“We just told her that we had to leave, and we’re going to a better place,” he says. “She understood.”
Staff writer Victoria Hoffmann contributed research.
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