Illegals Self-Deporting From the United States

"[Those who are self-deporting can use biographical data, documents, facial images and geo location in the app to prove that they have left the country.]"

"The alien must be at least three miles outside of the United States to successfully utilize this feature."

"While the use of the verify departure functionality is optional, if the alien chooses to use it, they must submit a facial image. It's required."

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin

 

"The operative word in that quote from the secretary is 'may'." 

"For many people who leave the United States, there may never be a lawful option for return to the United States, or reentry may be barred for many years."

"Forcing or coercing people into leaving their homes and their loved ones carries political, moral, and economic costs."

Heidi Altman, vice president of policy, National Immigration Law Center

 

"If you are here illegally, self-deportation is the best, safest and most cost-effective way to leave the United States to avoid arrest."

"DHS is now offering illegal aliens financial travel assistance and a stipend to return to their home country through the CBP Home App."

Secretary Kristi Noem

 

The scheme relies on the use of the CBP One app, with which a migrant's journey home can be traced  Getty Images

The CBP Home app has been downloaded about 1,500 times each day, according to Appfigures which tracks app downloads. Since January 2025, the app was downloaded about 300,000 times, according to the company’s CEO, Ariel Michaeli.The Trump administration portrays self-deportation as a way for migrants to preserve their ability to return to the United States someday. While speaking to the press, President Trump said immigrants who "self-deport" and leave the U.S. 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."

 

And thus goes Washington's mass deportation, with President Trump's administration trumpeting it was prepared to pay $1,000 to any immigrants illegally in the United States who are willing to voluntarily return to their country of origin. In a news release the Department of Homeland Security stated it was prepared to pay for travel assistance -- that people who use the CBP Home app to inform the government their plan to return home would be "deprioritized" for detention and removal by immigration enforcement.

 

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem (C) and Sidney Aki (R), director of field operations for the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) San Diego field office walk to the border during a tour of the San Ysidro Port of Entry, in San Diego, California, on March 16, 2025. Alex Brandon | Afp | Getty Images

The Department of Homeland Security revealed one migrant had been paid for a plane ticket to return to Honduras from Chicago, and that more tickets have been booked for this week and the following week. Immigration enforcement and mass deportation of immigrants in the United States illegally was a central promise of the Trump election campaign. An endeavour that is proving to be complex, expensive and resource-intensive. 

The Republican administration, aside from asking Congress for a large increase in resources for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement department whose responsibility it is to remove people from the U.S., is also fully engaged in persuading people illegally in the country to 'self-deport'. At the same time, persuasive television advertisements threaten action against anyone currently in the United States illegally. Social media images highlight immigration enforcement arrests and steps to send migrants to a prison in El Salvador.

 

Senior fellow at the American Immigration Council -- Aaron Reichlen-Melnick, advocating for immigrants, pointed out that migrants should be cautious about this latest offer from Homeland Security. It can be worse for people to leave and not pursue their case in immigration court, particularly if they are in removal proceedings. Should migrants in removal proceedings fail to show up in court they can automatically receive a deportation order. 

 

Leaving the country is generally interpreted as abandoning applications for relief, inclusive of asylum applications. "People's immigration status is not as simple as this makes it out to be", he warned.

 

A bus leaves the Bluebonnet Detention Facility after dropping off detainees, after the Supreme Court temporarily barred President Donald Trump's administration from deporting Venezuelan men in immigration custody, in Anson, Texas, April 21, 2025. Photo by Daniel Cole/Reuters

 

In Canada, Immigrant and Visible Minority Communities Increasingly Vote Conservative

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre and his wife Anaida wave to the crowd at an election campaign event, in Brampton, Ont., on April 9, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Arlyn McAdorey

"The immigrant community of Canada just blocked the Liberals from forming a majority."

"These new Canadians share our conservative values of hard work and the Canadian dream."

Angelo Isidorou, executive director, B.C. Conservative party 

 

"Immigrant-heavy ridings across the Greater Toronto Area [GTA] have swung from being decisively against to decisively for the provincial Conservatives over these last 30 years. It's part of the trend we're seeing across North America where immigrants and minorities are swinging to the political right; and it's also a story of how one of the GTA's largest constituencies is much more dynamic than we often realize."

"Since the late twentieth century, researchers have noted the changing demographics in Canada's suburbs, particularly in terms of ethnicity and immigrant status."

"In the Greater Toronto Area, the share of immigrants in the inner suburbs [Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough] has grown since the 1970s, and in the outer suburbs [Halton, Peel, York, and Durham] since the 1990s, while declining in the inner city region [City of Toronto] at the same time. Additionally, since immigration reform in 1967 – which abolished race and nationality quotas in favour of a point-based system – immigrants have increasingly been visible minorities."

University of Toronto, School of Cities

"Minority governments will take political sophistication to navigate. It’s about seeing the whole chessboard listening and taking counsel from many people. This will give us a glimpse into whether Carney has the intangible skills that make somebody a durable political leader and able to survive in this environment. Because there’s a question mark over whether he has any interest or is capable of doing this. And not everybody who voted for Carney quite knows what they got."

"Carney could be in a Keir Starmer situation where he’s elected, but it’s a loveless victory and he has a very short window in which to deliver what voters think they should be getting from him."

"If you don’t deliver soon and people began peeling away, it can be really difficult to recover from that. And so in many ways, I think his honeymoon ended the minute he stepped off the stage after giving his victory speech."

Jordan Leichnitz, former senior strategist, New Democratic party

Mark Carney during an election night event at TD Place in Ottawa, Ontario  Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

The immigrant vote played a significant role back in 2006 when the Conservatives under then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper became the government. Jason Kenney, Mr. Harper's then Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, was well recognized for his role in welcoming that demographic into the Conservative fold. That immigrant vote is now recognized as an important factor in Canadian elections, and in this election of April 28, 2025, the immigrant vote that tipped heavily in favour of the Conservatives may very well have denied Mark Carney and his Liberals the majority government they craved.

 

Pre-election polls identified the immigrant vote as favouring the Conservatives, and that tendency has increased as well, since 2021. The Economist published an analysis finding that among the 31 Toronto-area ridings with a population averaging 40 percent immigrants, experienced for the most part a significant shift to the Conservatives, over their preference in the 2021 federal election. Whereas in ridings with fewer new Canadians, the tendency was for the Liberals to pick up support.

 

The Economist analysis pointed out that under the surface Canada had undergone an electoral realignment reflective of the United States. "Just as in the United States, working-class and immigrant voters swung right", concluded the publication. In the October British Columbia election, non-white voters; Black, East Asian, Latino, Middle Eastern or South Asian tended to prefer the B.C. Conservatives.

 

A Reddit map of 2025 Liberal-Conservative vote patterns making the rounds indicated that the more immigrant and non-white a riding, the harder their shift to the Conservatives.  A survey by Innovative Research Group noted that Chinese-Canadians in British Columbia emerged far more Conservative than average; this support almost entirely concentrated among first-generation immigrants. Where new immigrants fell below the national average, a Liberal vote emerged.

 

A Nanos poll post-election found as well that 41 percent of Canadians under age 34 tended to vote Conservative; while 32 percent voted Liberal. In the over-55 cohort, Liberals dominated at 52 percent as opposed to 34 percent for the Conservatives.  For the first time in Canadian voting history, the average 25-year-old Canadian was likelier to vote Conservative than the average 65-year-old. The average immigrant was likelier to vote Conservative than the average native-born Canadian.

 

Liberal social policies, including harm reduction, repeat bail for chronic offenders and lax integration of other immigrants has seen new Canadians emerge as opponents of these policies. Conservatives "maintained their base and grew it", pointed out Abacus Data's David Coletto. "South Asian and Chinese-Canadians in the grater Toronto area voted for the cultural conservatism" the Conservative Party represented. "They value family, faith, entrepreneurship and community order. For many, the Liberals' progressive stances on gender, parental rights, and criminal justice reform felt out of touch."

"Traditionally, immigrant and visible minority communities have supported the centrist Liberal Party. In the Greater Toronto Area [GTA], where over half of all residents identify as “visible minority” [the category used by StatCan], Chinese and South Asian Canadians have long formed a key part of the Liberal base."

"Yet recent polling tells a different story. An October 2024 survey found that 45 per cent of immigrants had changed their political allegiances since arriving in Canada, with many now leaning Conservative."

"Meanwhile, another national survey from January 2025 found that a majority of East Asian [55 per cent] and South Asian [56 per cent] respondents expressed support for the Conservative Party, far outpacing support for the Liberals or the NDP."

The Conversation 

Photograph: Getty Images

Bringing Them All Home

"It's urgent and every day that goes on is just more and more suffering and more and more possible death and psychological devastation."

"[He and others with whom he was initially held - including women and children - had been forced to adjust to life in the tunnels]. We were gasping for our breath."

"[There was constant abuse]: "I witnessed a young woman who was being tortured by the terrorist. I mean literal torture, not just in the figurative sense."

US-Israeli hostage Keith Siegel  

"I'm here because of Trump. I'm here only because of him. I think he's the only one who can stop this war again. He has to convince Netanyahu, he has to convince Hamas, I think he can do it."

"They [his two children, Ariel and Kfir,] were murdered in cold blood, bare hands."

"They [his Hamas captors] used to tell me: 'Ah, it doesn't matter, you'll get a new wife, you'll get new kids, better wife, better kids'."

"You don't know when it's going to happen and when it happens, you're afraid for your life. The whole earth would move like an earthquake, but underground."

Former hostage Yarden Bibas

The 24 hostages presumed to be alive who are still held by Hamas: Top row, from left: Elkana Bohbot, Matan Angrest, Edan Alexander, Avinatan Or, Yosef-Haim Ohana, Alon Ohel. Second row, from left: Evyatar David, Guy Gilboa-Dalal, Bipin Joshi, Rom Braslavski, Ziv Berman, Gali Berman. Third row, from left: Omri Miran, Eitan Mor, Segev Kalfon, Nimrod Cohen, Maxim Herkin, Eitan Horn. Bottom row, from left: Matan Zangauker, Bar Kupershtein, David Cunio, Ariel Cunio, Tamir Nimrodi, Pinta Nattapong. (Hostages Families Forum)

"Out of 59, you had 24 that were living, and now I understand that it's not even that number."

"Edan Alexander's parents are here today. He is the last known living American hostage."

"We don't know how he's doing, really. We think we know, and hopefully positive." 

U.S. President Donald Trump

 

"To date, we have returned 196 of our hostages, 147 alive."

"There are [currently] 24 alive. Up to 24 living, 59 in total. We want to bring back the living and the deceased as well. It's a very important goal."

"In the war, there is the ultimate goal, and that ultimate goal is the victory over our enemies, and that we will achieve." 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Israelis attend a rally calling for the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, at Hostage Square in Tel Aviv on March 1, 2025. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)

President Trump stated during a National Day of Prayer event held at the White House on Thursday that he had just recently become aware that fewer than 24 Israeli hostages remain alive in captivity in Gaza, held by Hamas. Parents of U.S.-Israeli Eden Alexander still captive by Hamas had attended the event. The president was referring to the figure released by Israeli authorities and widely shared in recent months. 

These are men of all ages who had been taken hostage on October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel on a barbaric rampage of murder, killing over 1,200 men, women and children.

Of the over 200 children, women and men taken hostage on that fateful day, a relative handful remain alive, living in the most inhumane conditions imaginable. Tortured, shackled, starving, in fading health and psychological distress, reaching a state of disequilibrium they may never, if and when released, recover from. 

Their 'home' for the past year and a half has been deep in airless, dank tunnels dug deep throughout Gaza. If their minds are still in working order, they pass the endless hours of torment, dreaming of returning home.

Relatives and supporters of those held hostage in the Gaza Strip during a rally calling on the government for a deal that would bring all the remaining captives back, outside the prime minister residence in Jerusalem on March 2, 2025. (Menahem KAHANA / AFP)

They are not forgotten. Their families, their friends and colleagues, all of Israel yearns for their return. Those who have died while in captivity will be forever remembered. They represent a national sacrifice too dear to fade into memory. Their names and the pain they endured will remain as a reminder to Israelis and Jews everywhere of the impossible sacrifice imposed on a civilian population whose state and whose military can never be disengaged from protecting their citizens from unceasing hatred and violence from neighbours whose dearest wish is to see them all dead.

Classified information relayed to Israeli cabinet ministers as reported by the Kan News public broadcaster in Israel casts into doubt the number of those still living. Loathe to surrender hope entirely, during the annual International Bible Contest in Jerusalem on Independence Day Thursday, Israel's prime minister reiterated his government's intention to have all its citizens, whether alive or dead, returned to their homes.

The ultimate goals for the war now continuing in the Gaza Strip is eradication of Hamas as a military threat and political adversarial body, and to ensure that all of the hostages return home. The Palestinian enclave must, above all, be prevented from re-emerging as a future and ongoing threat to the State of Israel and her people whose right to existence, to live in peace with their neighbours is a basic human right not denied any other nation, any other people whatever their origins.

People protest against the Israeli government and call for the immediate release of the Gaza hostages, Tel Aviv, March 22, 2025. (Gili Yaari /Flash90)