The Trump Admin Is Spending Millions To Encourage Self-Deportation, But Few Migrants Actually Leave On Their Own

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released a video ad featuring its new secretary, Kristi Noem, who warns undocumented immigrants of the consequences of not self-deporting.

"Leave our country now or face deportation with the inability to return to the U.S.," the DHS wrote in its social media post accompanying the video ad. "But if you leave now, you may have an opportunity to return and enjoy our freedom and live the American Dream," Noem said in a separate statement.

The video is part of a multimillion-dollar "hyper-targeted" ad campaign promoting self-deportation, a term popularized by Mitt Romney in a 2012 presidential debate. When asked how he planned to get undocumented immigrants to leave the country, Romney said:

"The answer is self-deportation, which is people decide they could do better by going home because they can't find work here because they don't have legal documentation to allow them to work here."

Immigration restriction advocates support the self-deportation theory, which is closely tied to conservative policy proposals that aim to complicate the lives of undocumented citizens living in the country in order to get them to live—such as taking away access to public education for undocumented children and checking for identification documents during routine encounters with the public.

According to Ira Mehlam, spokesman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, immigrants are rational actors who will leave if the risks outweigh the benefits. "[Undocumented immigrants] are very rational people. You have to convince people who come on their own to leave on their own," he said.

That premise is put into question by a collection of studies cited by the American Immigration Council (AIC), which show that undocumented immigrants usually have a lot more to lose by self-deporting, including homes, jobs, and families. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, more than one-third of all undocumented immigrants own a home in the United States.

While self-deportation numbers are difficult to obtain, the American Immigration Council (AIC) claims such cases are rare. To back its claim, it cited studies analyzing immigration populations in states with a history of strong enforcement laws such as Arizona, Alabama, and Oklahoma. "The immigrant population in these states has remained in place and the predicted exodus never materialized," reads a passage of one of the studies.

"Data from Oklahoma show that the state's Latino and immigrant populations continued to grow even after the enactment of immigration enforcement laws—This is inconsistent with the expectations of the proponents of 'self‐deportation.'"

- American Immigration Council

The AIC also highlighted the results of "Operation Scheduled Departure," a 2008 ICE operation aimed at promoting self-deportation. The pilot program, which was promoted through Univision, offered voluntary deportation without detention. ICE even offered to cover the costs of return for eligible participants.

However, in the three weeks that the pilot ran, a total of 136 people called the hotline set up by ICE and only eight people out of the estimated 457,000 eligible undocumented immigrants actually took the offer.