US President Donald Trump's administration said on Monday that it would pay illegal immigrants $1,000 (€880) to return to their home countries voluntarily, in the apparent next step of its plans to tackle the issue.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) stated in a press release that it would also pay for travel assistance, and that people who use an app called CBP Home to tell the government they plan to return home would be “deprioritised” 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," said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
“DHS is now offering illegal aliens financial travel assistance and a stipend to return to their home country through the CBP Home App,” she added
The app is a revamped version of the one previously used by the Biden administration to allow nearly 1 million migrants to schedule appointments to enter the country legitimately.
The DHS said it had already paid for a plane ticket for one person to return home to Honduras from Chicago, adding that more tickets have been booked for this week and next.
Self-deportation as self-protection
The Trump administration has often sought to portray self-deportation as a way for people currently in the country without legal status to ensure they can return to the US at some future date.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, the Trump himself said that immigrants who “self-deport” and leave the US might have a chance to return legally eventually “if they’re good people” and “love our country”.
“And if they aren’t, they won’t,” he said.
However, immigrants' rights organisations have urged caution.
According to Aaron Reichlen-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, it’s often worse for undocumented people — particularly those who are already in removal proceedings — to leave the country rather than fighting their cases in immigration court.
Reichlen-Melnick warned that migrants in removal proceedings who don’t show up to court risk receiving a deportation order automatically.
He explained that leaving the country usually counts as abandoning an application for relief or an asylum application, adding that DHS has not indicated any close coordination with the courts to ensure that people who leave the US face no repercussions.
Indeed, the Trump administration has coupled its self-deportation push with television ads threatening action against people living in the US illegally, accompanied by social media posts which show immigration enforcement arrests and migrants being sent to a prison in El Salvador notorious for harsh conditions.
Mass deportation problems
Trump made the mass deportation of immigrants a centrepiece of his presidential campaign, but the endeavour remains costly and resource-intensive.
His administration has asked Congress for a massive increase in resources for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which is responsible for apprehending people targeted for removal from the country.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, it costs $17,121 (€15,104) to arrest, detain and remove someone from the US.
Self-deportation has been viewed as attractive by the Trump administration as it doesn't require extensive government-to-government negotiations to get a country to take back its citizens. But a number of countries either refuse to take back citizens who are returned by US immigration enforcement officials or make that process challenging
A 2011 study by the Migration Policy Institute and the European University Institute found that there were about 128 similar schemes — often referred to as "pay-to-go" programmes — around the world.
But the study also found that with a few exceptions, such as one program to return people in the 1990s from Germany to Bosnia, these voluntary return programmes generally failed to encourage 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.
