Trump's immigration strategy drives surge in ‘self-deportations’ as migrants abandon asylum claims

WASHINGTON, DC: President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies are prompting a massive increase in so-called "self-deportations," with tens of thousands of migrants now voluntarily leaving the United States or abandoning asylum claims rather than sit in detention centers or fight increasingly difficult court battles.

New immigration data analyzed by the Washington Post reveals that more than 80,000 migrants were issued voluntary departure orders from January 2025 through March 2026, more than seven times the total reported during the final period of the Biden administration.

Trump’s ‘self-deportation’ strategy fuels a major spike in voluntary departures

Under Trump’s second-term immigration agenda, the Department of Homeland Security has dramatically expanded detention operations while simultaneously encouraging migrants to leave the country voluntarily before facing formal deportation proceedings.

Immigration judges issued more than 80,000 “voluntary departure” orders from January 2025 through March of this year, according to court data obtained by the Vera Institute of Justice and shared with The Washington Post.

Such orders are granted to immigrants who request to leave on their own terms while giving up the opportunity to seek a new life in the US. They are not given a formal deportation order, which could make it easier for them to return legally in the future.

That is at least seven times the number of people who abandoned their immigration cases in the last 15 months of the Biden administration, when 11,400 people did so.

During President Donald Trump’s second term, more than 70 percent of those who were granted a voluntary departure order were in immigration detention when they made the request, a far higher share than those who departed voluntarily while Joe Biden was in the White House.

The shift is one of the most striking data points to emerge from Trump’s mass deportation campaign and appears to be part of his broader effort to purge millions of immigrants from the US.

Officials have promoted the option on social media and in posters plastered in detention centers and courts.

Critics warn detention pressure is forcing migrants to give up, DHS defends

Immigration advocates and Democrats, however, argue the surge in voluntary departures reflects growing desperation inside detention facilities rather than genuine choice.

“These changes come at the same time as the number of people who are detained and facing deportation is increasing and relatively fewer people are being released from detention,” Vera researchers Jacquelyn Pavilon and Neil Agarwal concluded in a report.

The DHS declined to comment to the Washington Post on the increase in voluntary departures and repeated its unsubstantiated claim that millions have “self-deported” since Inauguration Day “because illegal aliens know President Trump is enforcing our immigration laws.”

The agency defended its efforts to detain immigrants for the duration of their court proceedings, saying officials are seeking to deport those who arrived illegally under former President Joe Biden.

“Biden and [then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas] recklessly unleashed millions of unvetted illegal aliens into American communities — and they abused many loopholes to do so,” DHS said in a statement. “President Trump and Secretary [Markwayne] Mullin are now enforcing this law as it was actually written to keep America safe.”

“People are taking it because they’re trying to get out of detention more quickly, because they don’t see any possible avenues for relief for themselves,” said Shayna Kessler, director of the Advancing Universal Representation initiative at the Vera Institute of Justice.

“It really appears as though it’s a component of this mass deportation agenda where people are being encouraged to depart even when they have potentially a lawful right to stay,” she added.

For now, the rising number of migrants voluntarily leaving the country appears to represent one of the clearest signs yet that Trump’s immigration strategy is reshaping the system and accelerating removals without relying solely on traditional deportation orders.