Trump administration’s first “self-deportation” flight takes off from Houston

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More than 60 immigrants “self-deported” from Houston on Monday as part of the Trump administration’s latest immigration enforcement program, which offers free flights to undocumented immigrants and a $1,000 stipend, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

“If you are here illegally, use the CBP Home App to take control of your departure and receive financial support to return home,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said. “If you don’t, you will be subjected to fines, arrest, deportation and will never allowed to return.”

The Trump administration said this was the first flight as part of DHS’s Project Homecoming, which was announced in March. The charter flight carrying 64 people took off Monday morning, taking 38 to Honduras and 26 to Colombia.

During the presidential campaign, President Trump promised mass deportations but has reportedly grown frustrated that immigration agents have not been able to deport enough people to stay on pace to meet the administration’s goal of 1 million removals for the year.

To participate in the voluntary removal program, immigrants must request to be flown to their home country through the government’s cellphone application, CBP Home.

“llegal aliens submitting their intent to voluntarily self-deport in CBP Home will also be deprioritized for detention and removal ahead of their departure as long as they demonstrate they are making meaningful strides in completing that departure,” according to a statement by DHS in May.

The average cost to arrest, detain, and remove an immigrant is $17,121, according to the agency.

Even though Monday’s flight was characterized as the program’s first flight, the Trump administration had announced a government-sponsored flight of an immigrant who voluntarily self-deported from Chicago to Honduras in May.

Also on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court gave the Trump administration the legal right to revoke legal protections for nearly 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants who were enrolled in the Temporary Protected Status program — a decades-old designation given to migrants by the federal government allowing them to stay in the U.S. temporarily because of natural or political crises in their home countries. Those immigrants could now be vulnerable to deportation.

On social media, the Trump administration has also threatened to fine immigrants $998 every day they decide to stay in the U.S. after an immigration judge has issued a deportation order. It has also threatened to fine immigrants who sign up for Project Homecoming, but fail to follow through, between $1,000 and $5,000.

The Trump administration has described the program as an incentive for undocumented immigrants to leave the U.S. on their own without legal repercussions. But immigrant rights advocates say the Trump administration can’t be trusted to follow through on paying people the $1,000 stipend.

Maribel Hastings with America’s Voice, a nonprofit that advocates for the legalization of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, recently wrote that “it's not very likely that the immigrant will ever get paid.

“Undocumented people who have spent their whole lives contributing billions of dollars to the economy, to the fabric of this country, who work in key industries, and who have citizen children and grandchildren, deserve to be legalized,” Hasting added, “not given $1,000 and a one-way ticket to self-deport.”

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, a Washington, D.C., group that advocates for immigrants, warned that immigrants should be careful if they choose to participate, in part because undocumented immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for more than year can be barred from entering the U.S. for a decade.

Even though President Trump has said that people who participate may one day return to the country legally, the details of the program don’t indicate if participating immigrants would be exempted from the 10-year ban.

“Crucially, leaving the country may mean giving up on a very real chance at staying here legally under laws and processes that already exist,” Reichlin-Melnick wrote. “Given this, it’s critical for anyone considering taking this offer to speak with a qualified and competent attorney first.”

The idea of self-deportation is not new in modern politics. Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney proposed the idea in 2012.

At the time, Trump, years from launching his presidential campaign, commented on Romney’s proposal: “He had a crazy policy of self-deportation, which was maniacal. It sounded as bad as it was, and he lost all of the Latino vote,” Trump said after Romney lost the election to President Obama.

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