WASHINGTON — Pushing forward with its mass deportation agenda, President Donald Trump's administration said Monday it will pay $1,000 to immigrants who are in the United States illegally and return to their home country voluntarily.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a news release it will also pay for travel assistance — and that people who use an app called CBP Home to tell the government they plan to return home will be "deprioritized" for detention and removal by immigration enforcement.
"If you are here illegally, self-deportation is the best, safest and most cost-effective way to leave the United States to avoid arrest," Secretary Kristi Noem said.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks during a news conference April 9 in Washington.
The department claimed it already paid for a plane ticket for one migrant to return to Honduras from Chicago and said more tickets were booked for this week and next.
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Trump made immigration enforcement and the mass deportation of immigrants in the United States illegally a centerpiece of his campaign, and he is following through during the first months of his administration. It's a costly, resource-intensive endeavor.
While the Republican administration asked Congress for a massive increase in resources for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement department responsible for removing people from the country, it also pushed people to "self-deport."
It coupled this self-deportation push with television ads threatening action against people in the U.S. illegally and social media images showing immigration enforcement arrests and migrants being sent to a prison in El Salvador.
President Donald Trump gestures from the stairs of Air Force One upon his arrival Sunday at Joint Base Andrews, Md.
The Trump administration often portrayed self-deportation as a way for migrants to preserve their ability to return to the U.S. someday. But Aaron Reichlen-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, which advocates for immigrants, said there's a lot for migrants to be cautious about in the latest offer from Homeland Security.
He said it's often worse for people to leave the country and not fight their case in immigration court, especially if they're already in removal proceedings. He said if migrants are in removal proceedings and don't show up in court they can automatically get a deportation order and leaving the country usually counts as abandoning many applications for relief including asylum applications.
Homeland Security didn't indicate it coordinated with the immigration courts so there are no repercussions for people in immigration court if they leave, he said.
"People's immigration status is not as simple as this makes it out to be," Reichlen-Melnick said.
He questioned where Homeland Security would get the money and the authorization to make the payments — and he suggested they are necessary because the administration can't arrest and remove as many people as it promised so it has to encourage people to do it on their own.
"They're not getting their numbers," he said.
As part of its self-deportation effort, the Trump administration transformed an app that was used by the Biden administration to allow almost 1 million migrants to schedule appointments to enter the country into a tool to help migrants return home. Under the Biden administration, it was called CBP One; now it's dubbed CBP Home.
Homeland Security claimed "thousands" of migrants used the app to self-deport.
Migrants walk into Mexico after being deported from the U.S. on Jan. 21 at El Chaparral pedestrian border bridge in Tijuana, Mexico.
But Mark Krikorian, who heads the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for less immigration, said he doesn't see the offer of paying people to go home as an admission that something in the Trump administration's immigration enforcement agenda isn't working.
Considering the millions of people who are in the country illegally, he said, it's impossible to deport all of them so the administration has to combine its enforcement efforts with encouraging people to go home voluntarily.
Krikorian said he supports the idea of paying migrants to leave, though he questioned how it would work in reality.
"How do you make sure that they've actually gone home? Do you make them sign an agreement where they agree not to challenge their removal if they were to come back?" he questioned. "The execution matters, but the concept is sound."
Other countries have tried various iterations of paying migrants to return home.
There's a reason it's attractive to governments wanting to encourage migrants to go. It costs less to buy someone a plane ticket and some incentive money than it does to pay to find them, detain them if necessary, wait for the courts to rule on their case and then send them home.
A 2011 study by the Migration Policy Institute and the European University Institute found that there were about 128 programs — often referred to as pay-to-go programs — around the world.
But the study found that, with a few exceptions such as one program to return people in the 1990s from Germany to Bosnia, these voluntary return programs generally failed at encouraging large numbers of people to go home.
It is not clear whether these programs resulted in migrants who took the payments actually staying in their home countries and not trying to emigrate again.
Protecting rural immigrant populations from expanding reach of ICE
Protecting rural immigrant populations from expanding reach of ICE
Helping people understand their rights might seem like dry legal work, but working for Jefferson County Immigrant Rights Association (JCIRA) allowed Courtney Morales-Thral, the Multicultural Center administrator, to make a real difference in the lives of immigrants on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.
"We heard recently that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was parked in front of the hospital in Port Angeles, and that stopped someone from going to see a baby in the hospital because they didn't feel safe," Morales-Thrall told . "That's going to make people turn around and go home or go to a different hospital, which may be out here, rurally, an hour or two away"
Despite the Keep Washington Working Act passed in 2019, which prohibits law enforcement from detaining anyone to determine their immigration status and working with CBP or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, amongst other rights, immigrants have good reasons to feel nervous.Â
The immigrant community here still bears the trauma of a campaign waged against them in 2008.Â
After a suspected terrorist was apprehended at the Port Angeles border, the number of agents increased from four agents to 25. Suddenly, checkpoints appeared on highways, with CBP and ICE agents demanding to see IDs and other documents from drivers and bus passengers. They also monitored public places, like hospitals and schools.Â
In the 2011 documentary it was reported that between February and November 2008, the border patrol stopped 24,524 vehicles at 53 roadblocks in Washington State. These stops led to 81 undocumented immigrants being taken into custody, though they were unable to find any additional evidence of terrorist activity. "The community was decimated by the amount of deportations, stops, and the trauma of that time in this area," Morales-Thrall said.
In that same documentary, Pastor John Topal from St. Mary of the Sea Catholic Church in Port Townsend summed up the cultural shift by saying, "The border patrol says it will not apprehend people in churches or schools, but their presence at these institutions nevertheless has had a chilling effect."
Trump's recent executive order allowing ICE into formerly protected spaces like hospitals and schools has reignited that trauma for many in the immigrant community, regardless of the State's new protections.Â
Linda Rosenbury, the superintendent of Port Townsend Schools, is working closely with JCIRA to help parents and high school students understand their rights and give them the support and reassurance they need to continue attending school.
The school is also working with staff to understand what types of warrants allow immigration agents into part of the school beyond the main office and what kind of legal support they can get if they have an emergency need.
Alongside having clear messaging for immigrant families and teaching staff, the school also helps families make plans in case anything does happen.
"When I've studied ICE raids in the past, it's a major impact on a community. If there is an ICE raid at a local employer and then there are multiple children left without caretakers," Rosenbury said. "If we had to place students in homes, we would follow family plans and ensure that there's a safe place for every student."
While the schools are focusing on the physical well-being of immigrant families, JCIRA has found a way to help support both their understanding of their rights and their mental well-being through a trauma-informed therapy program specifically for immigrants.Â
"We started a mental health partnership with an organization, a nonprofit based in Mexico because therapy is hugely cost-prohibitive for a lot of people and also has a lack of cultural understanding and language proficiency," Morales-Thrall said.
JCIRA connects local immigrants with a therapist in Mexico who specializes in migration and trauma through a new low-bar support program.Â
"The majority of the immigrants we work with are Mexican, Latino, Guatemalan, and so that's the focus, but it's not just for those people," Morales-Thrall said. This program brought a resource to rural Jefferson County, whose local hospital has struggled to find the resources to provide even basic language support.Â
"There's one doctor that speaks pretty good Spanish, and so that's really great, but therapists, absolutely not," Morales-Thrall said. "And even if they had a nice white lady that speaks Spanish, it wouldn't be the same. Because people need that cultural understanding when you're talking about immigration."
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