President Donald Trump’s nationwide immigration raids have made headlines for months, but his administration’s aggressive immigration policies have also inspired tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to save federal law enforcement any trouble and simply deport themselves.
Under the Biden administration, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) used a cell phone app called CBP One to import thousands of illegal immigrants, allowing them to book immigration court appointments at U.S. ports of entry — appointments which they often failed to show up to. Earlier this year, Trump’s U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) removed, retooled, and relaunched the app, now called CBP Home, to encourage illegal immigrants to leave the U.S. voluntarily. According to agency statistics, it’s working.
DHS officials, according to Breitbart News, have confirmed that “tens of thousands of illegal aliens” have used the CBP Home app to self-deport. The app allows illegal immigrants in the U.S. to confirm with DHS their intention to depart, schedule their departure through a U.S. port, and then confirm that they have in fact left the U.S. and arrived at their destination.
The Trump administration also offered illegal immigrants self-deporting via CBP Home a $1,000 stipend, in addition to covering airfare, further incentivizing self-deportation as an alternative to being tracked down, arrested, detained, and deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In addition to incentivizing self-deportation, the Trump administration previously announced that it would begin fining illegal immigrants, applying a rarely-used U.S. law to charge illegal immigrants nearly $1,000 for every day they remain in the U.S. illegally.
According to Andrew Arthur, resident fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), nearly one million illegal immigrants have likely self-deported. Arthur explained that self-deportation is “cheaper for taxpayers and arguably much more effective” than ICE raids. Each illegal immigrant arrested, detained, and deported by ICE costs American taxpayers roughly $17,000, while self-deportations — even through the CBP Home app, with the promised stipend and airfare coverage — cost, at most, $5,000 per self-deportation.
Analyzing labor force data, Arthur concluded that at least 773,000 illegal immigrants have self-deported. But illegal “aliens will only leave if they believe Trump and [border czar Tom] Homan are serious about arrests,” Arthur warned. He told The Washington Stand, “To be effective … aliens here unlawfully must understand that they are facing the prospect of arrest, detention, prosecution, and removal. Anything that undermines that belief — including any announcements that certain aliens will be exempted from arrest and removal — will blunt the effectiveness of self-deportation.”
