A flight of 65 passengers, and a difficult choice: return home with an incentive, or face detention and forced deportation. This isn’t a scene from a dystopian film, but the latest initiative from the Trump administration on immigration.
The program, launched in March and first implemented with a flight departing from Houston, offers illegal migrants the possibility of “self-deporting”. In exchange for leaving voluntarily, they receive a free return ticket and a $1,000 bonus. The alternative is remaining in the U.S. in the shadows, under the real threat of arrest, overcrowded detention centers, and a future marked by a ban on reentry.
U.S. authorities argue that the initiative is meant to encourage voluntary departures. However, many observers view it as a form of psychological pressure disguised as a humanitarian measure. Michelle Brané, former executive director of the Biden administration’s Family Reunification Task Force, noted that the program could be effective in principle provided that there is no coercion and that individuals are fully informed and protected in their rights.
The Department of Homeland Security has reinvigorated the use of laws such as the Alien Enemies Act del 1798, which allows the U.S. president to detain, deport, or impose restrictions on citizens of enemy nations during wartime, and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1958, which restructured and consolidated the country’s immigration and nationality laws. Meanwhile, the State Department has also begun using artificial intelligence to monitor the social media profiles of foreign students suspected of sympathizing with groups like Hamas.
There have also been controversial episodes, such as attempts–ultimately blocked by the Supreme Court–to send Venezuelan nationals to prisons known for human rights abuses, and the forced deportation of pro-Palestinian protesters, who are now at the center of legal battles.
The idea repeatedly expressed by the Republican leader and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is that those who leave voluntarily might eventually be allowed to return legally. This message is echoed in official government campaigns urging undocumented migrants to self-deport now to preserve a future legal pathway.
Kerri Talbot, executive director of Immigration Hub, a nonprofit policy group focused on immigration, remains skeptical. She has stated that the program is misleading, since most people who leave under these terms are unlikely to be permitted to return. The current laws, she said, prevent it, and the administration does not have the authority to change those laws.
Meanwhile, deportation numbers are rising. But paradoxically, the current Republican administration still lags behind the previous Democratic one in total removals during the same timeframe.
