RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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President Trump 's controversial "self-deportation" program, which pays unauthorized immigrants to leave the U.S., is on pace to account for more than 200,000 departures, according to internal data shared with Axios.
Why it matters: Launched last year alongside a multimillion-dollar ad campaign, the initiative is virtually the only carrot in an aggressive immigration crackdown that has been long on sticks.
Through July 16, the nearly $600 million program — dubbed Project Homecoming by the Department of Homeland Security — has helped about 132,000 people exit the U.S.
Roughly 70,000 more have signed up and are on track to leave, according to the data.
About half of the self-deportations have involved immigrants held in detention, under an effort that accelerated the departures and began when a DOGE staffer brought Project Homecoming into ICE facilities.
The big picture: The self-deportation program is a key part of the administration's push to remove 1 million unauthorized immigrants from the U.S. each year.
The idea was that unauthorized immigrants would be so fearful of being arrested and detained by ICE or Customs and Border Protection that they'd voluntarily leave the U.S., with the promise of free travel and a stipend of $1,000, paid once they had left.
The stipend has increased to $2,600 and was briefly $3,000 last Christmas.
Border czar Tom Homan said in May that encouraging self-deportations was "part of the plan from the very beginning."
Last year, then-acting ICE director Todd Lyons described the program as a way for the agency to "see our number" on deportations. But DHS hasn't released any official statistics to confirm its progress.
The government contract for the self-deportation program will run out of funds by the end of August, and DHS is seeking bids for another contract. The agency didn't respond to questions about whether there would any lapse in the program next month.
Zoom in: Project Homecoming started slowly, attracting about 24,000 immigrants in its first six months as staffers arranged deportees' travel documents and flights out of the U.S.
The White House then pressured DHS officials to move faster.
" The push was daily calls from the White House and weekly principal level calls [with Deputy White House Chief of Staff] Stephen Miller directly," one source said.
"They wanted like thousands pushed through on a daily basis, and we were putting through like dozens."
Behind the scenes: In August, a DOGE staffer aiming to shorten the time detained immigrants were locked up turned to the Project Homecoming team for help, and began taking its staff into ICE facilities, three sources with knowledge of the plan told Axios.
Case managers for the self-deportation program are now in 40 ICE detention sites, and about half of its 200,000-plus cases have involved immigrants in detention.
People in detention opting to leave the U.S. through the initiative now spend an average of 17 days in detention detained compared the typical 50 days, according to ICE data. That's begun to free up bed space in some detention centers.
"The administration for the first part of this thing had a bed-space shortage problem," said Todd Bensman, a former adviser to Homan. "You can't do mass deportation unless you have beds. They're inextricably tied."
"For the first time, someone walks in and goes, 'Hey, who here just wants to go home?' And everybody's like, 'I want to go home,'" one source said. "It's an immediate jump" in detainees seeking deportation.
By the numbers: Each self-deportation is costing the government about $2,500, plus the stipend paid to the deportee, DHS says. Removing an immigrant who doesn't volunteer for deportation costs about $18,245, the agency said.
What they're saying: "Thanks to the overwhelming success of Project Homecoming under President Trump, the CBP Home app has achieved far greater efficiency and participation than originally anticipated," a DHS spokesperson said, adding that DHS projects $2.5 billion in savings on removals costs thanks to the program.
A spokesperson for Salus, the contractor running the initiative, said the company "is proud of the humane and dignified support that it has provided ... We are committed to continuing to deliver for this valuable program."
The other side: Critics say the self-deportation effort would have been better run by the UN's International Organization for Migration, which promoted its work with the program last March but is no longer involved. IOM runs resettlement programs around the world and focuses on migrants' rights and international law.
" All of a sudden the whole program got reduced to a spreadsheet to buy plane tickets," said a source familiar with Project Homecoming who believes IOM would've done more to help deportees after they left the U.S.
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