More than 200,000 migrants have taken Trump’s offer to get paid for self-deporting since the program’s inception.
As part of its strategy to carry out 1 million deportations a year, the Trump administration has embarked on an ambitious campaign, unmatched in U.S. history, to encourage individuals to “self-deport.”
The effort is perhaps at least in part a tacit acknowledgment that the administration’s numerical target might be impossible through immigration enforcement alone.
While a somewhat similar U.S. attempt in 2008 to encourage departures was considered a failure, administration officials apparently believe they can reverse that record through a potent combination of carrots and sticks.
The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute last year published a study that said “historical precedents” suggested cash incentives wouldn’t lead to many self-deportations, noting that a comparable 2008 U.S. program “drew just eight participants.
What Does the Program Include?
The scheme is unofficially named by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “Project Homecoming” and its budget is about $600 million.
Migrants who sign up receive free airplane flights, in addition to their so-called exit bonuses.
A total of 132,000 people have left the U.S. through the program, with another 70,000 signed up, now waiting to leave, according to Axios.
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 voluntary mass exodus started slowly, with only about 24,000 people signing up during the six months after the DHS launched the widely advertised program in May 2025, according to data obtained by Axios.
The White House then pressured DHS officials to move faster. There were phone calls on a daily basis from the deputy White House chief of staff, Stephen Miller, directly. White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson didn’t deny the administration’s push on the issue, saying, “Anyone in the country illegally should self-deport. Otherwise, they will be deported.”
Meanwhile, DHS also increased the cash incentive to $2,600 in late January, after temporarily raising it to $3,000 during a 10-day period in last December that included Christmas.
Despite all the efforts, just around half of them took this step while in detention centres, according to The Independent.
The breakthrough came in August 2025 when – the since-dissolved– DOGE staffer reportedly started bringing Project Homecoming case managers into migrant detention centers.
Trump campaigned on a pledge to carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history. His administration set an internal goal to expel 1 million undocumented immigrants annually.
