President Donald Trump’s administration announced Monday that it would pay $1,000 to illegal immigrants who voluntarily return to their home countries, continuing its mass deportation goal.
According to a news release from the Department of Homeland Security, it will also include travel assistance.
Additionally, individuals who use the CBP Home app to inform the government that they want to return home will be “deprioritized” for detention and deportation by immigration officials.
“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 stated. “DHS is now offering illegal aliens financial travel assistance and a stipend to return to their home country through the CBP Home App.”
More tickets have been reserved for this week and next, the agency said, adding that it has already covered the cost of one migrant’s aircraft ticket back to Honduras from Chicago.
During the first few months of his presidency, Trump is carrying out his campaign promises to enforce immigration laws and deport large numbers of illegal immigrants from the United States. However, it is an expensive and resource-intensive undertaking.
The Republican administration is encouraging illegal immigrants to “self-deport” while simultaneously requesting a significant increase in funding from Congress for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division, which is in charge of removing people from the nation.
This drive for self-deportation has been accompanied by social media posts featuring immigration enforcement arrests and migrants being transferred to an El Salvadorian prison, as well as television commercials threatening action against those who are in the country illegally.
Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday, the president himself proposed self-deportation, something the Trump administration has frequently promoted as a means for migrants to maintain their right to return to the United States in the future. According to him, immigrants who “self-deport” and leave the nation may someday be able to return lawfully “if they’re good people” and “love our country.”
“And if they aren’t, they won’t,” Trump declared.
However, Aaron Reichlen-Melnick, a senior fellow at the immigration advocacy group American Immigration Council, stated that there are numerous things that immigrants should be wary of in the most recent Homeland Security offer.
He claimed that, particularly if they are already facing removal procedures, it is frequently worse for people to leave the country without pursuing their case in immigration court.
According to him, migrants who are in removal proceedings and fail to appear in court may be automatically deported, and leaving the country is typically interpreted as giving up on a number of relief requests, including asylum requests.
It might be a complicated procedure
Furthermore, he continued, Homeland Security is not making any indications that it is closely working with the immigration courts to ensure that those in immigration court face no consequences if they leave.
“People’s immigration status is not as simple as this makes it out to be,” Reichlen-Melnick stated.
In response to his inquiry on where Homeland Security would obtain the funding and authorization to make the payments, he said that they are required since the administration is unable to accomplish the number of arrests and removals it has promised and must instead encourage people to do it on their own.
He remarked, “They’re not getting their numbers.”
The Trump administration has turned an app that the Biden administration used to enable almost 1 million migrants make appointments to enter the nation into a tool to assist migrants in returning home as part of its self-deportation campaign. Previously known as CBP One under the Biden administration, it is currently known as CBP Home.
According to Homeland Security, “thousands” of migrants have self-deported using the program.
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The chairman of the Center for Immigration Studies, which promotes fewer immigrants, Mark Krikorian, however, stated that he does not view the proposal to pay individuals to return home as a recognition that the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement strategy is failing.
He stated that the government must mix its own enforcement operations with urging people to return home willingly because it is difficult to deport all of the millions of people who are in the nation unlawfully.
Although Krikorian questioned how it would actually operate, he stated that he supports the notion of paying migrants to leave.
