A dire choice to ‘self-deport’

More unauthorized immigrants are opting to leave the U.S. on their own terms rather than risk being forced out with nothing

Celeste traveled from Peru to the U.S. two decades ago, then a young woman of 19, and overstayed her tourist visa. She had studied graphic design back home but, unable to work in her field without papers, instead found arduous work cleaning hotel rooms and offices in Los Angeles. She built a life here, making friends and taking courses at a local community college. She paid her taxes annually, hoping she could one day gain legal status.

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But years passed without the dramatic reforms needed to reshape and unclog the legal pathways to U.S. citizenship. And in the months since President Trump started his second term, her American dream has imploded. She’s unnerved by the news images of undocumented immigrants being loaded onto planes, shackled like violent criminals, and returned to their native countries. The thought of being ripped from her home, without time to pack up her belongings or say goodbye to friends, shakes her to the core.

So, Celeste has made a tough decision: She will continue cleaning offices and saving money for just a few more months, and return to Peru by year’s end.

Even with a plan to leave, she feels vulnerable and exposed. She now avoids restaurants, her favorite dance spots, even trail hikes. She’s stopped enrolling in online classes, she said, because she’s apprehensive about registering her name or address.

“The fear that they could grab you is always there,” said Celeste, who asked that The Times not use her full name for fear of making her a target for immigration authorities.

Trump came into his second term promising the largest deportation effort in U.S. history. During the campaign, he focused his rhetoric on undocumented immigrants who had committed violent crimes. But shortly after he took office, his administration made clear that they considered anyone in the country without authorization to be a criminal.

In the months since, the new administration has used a variety of tactics — explicit and subtle — to urge immigrants to depart the country of their own accord.

The day he was inaugurated, Trump disabled the CBP One mobile app that the Biden administration had utilized since 2023 to create a more orderly process of applying for asylum from the U.S.-Mexico border. Thousands of migrants camped at the border had their asylum appointments abruptly canceled.

Instead, the Trump administration launched a replacement app, CBP Home, that allows immigrants to notify the government of their intent to leave the country. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to The Times’ request for data regarding the number of people who have used the app.

Last month, the agency launched an ad campaign urging people in the country without authorization to leave immediately. “If you don’t, we will find you and we will deport you,” agency Secretary Kristi Noem says in the ad. This week, Trump told Fox Noticias he’s formulating a plan to give a stipend and an airplane ticket to immigrants in the country illegally who opt to “self-deport.”

The administration isn’t just targeting undocumented immigrants. In recent weeks, Homeland Security has messaged migrants who entered the country using the Biden- era CBP One app, telling them their temporary legal status has been terminated and they should leave “immediately.”

And then there are the images of the migrants deported to a notorious El Salvador prison, shackled one behind the other in prison garb, heads bowed and shaven. The administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to remove the Venezuelan nationals without due process, alleging that they were all gang members.

“One of the impacts of the various Trump policy measures is to strike terror and fear in immigrant communities,” said Kevin Johnson, a professor of public interest law at UC Davis School of Law. “It’s designed to show immigrants, ‘We’re out to get you.’ ”

Three months in, it’s difficult to estimate how many people are making the grueling decision to leave the lives and families built here under more lenient enforcement policies to return to home countries that many have not seen for decades.

But even in liberal-leaning California, where undocumented immigrants enjoy greater access to social services than in many regions of the U.S., advocates say they are fielding more questions from people who fear being plucked up and deported and are considering leaving on their own terms.

Luz Gallegos, executive director of TODEC Legal Center in the Inland Empire, said her staff members talk “daily” with folks who are considering leaving. Pummeled by the “constant attacks” on immigrants, she said, people are posing logistical questions: Can they take their cars? What happens to their kids’ education?

“What comes up a lot in the sessions is, ‘Prefiero irme con algo, que irme sin nada,’ ” Gallegos said. “I’d rather leave with something than leave with nothing.”

To significantly reduce the country’s unauthorized immigrant population, currently estimated at about 11 million, the administration and Congress would need to make dramatic changes, experts say. Rounding up and packing off millions of people across the country would require a massive deployment of resources and far more detention capacity. The extensive backlog of immigration court cases — there were more than 3.6 million cases pending at the end of March, according to TRAC Reports — also stymies such efforts.

“Given the current level of resources and the current strategies, you can’t remove 11 million people from the country,” said Johnson. “They need some people to just leave.”

That’s where the notion of encouraging self-deportation comes in. Mitt Romney proposed the idea during the 2012 Republican primary, suggesting his administration would make it so hard for undocumented people to get jobs that they’d leave for a country where they could legally work.

At the time, his embrace of the concept was widely viewed as a reason he lost among Latino voters in the general election. But more than a decade later, the strategy has gained traction.

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