Any keen observer of American politics for decades such as myself has long heard both Democrats and Republicans say that the self-deportation of our tens of millions of illegal aliens is unrealistic. High profile academic studies like this one promoted by the American Immigration Council in 2012 purported to show that self-deportation (as promoted by Mitt Romney and others) was not rational behavior on the part of immigrants.
In another American Immigration Council report from that same year they called self-deportation a “myth”. The New York Times’s Emily Bazelon labeled self-deportation a right wing “dream” while the libertarian CATO institute has called attempts to promote the self-deportation of illegals as “extremely unlikely” to succeed in a report where they also claimed that DACA doesn’t harm Americans.
Meanwhile, countless Americans have begged our local, state, and the Federal government to put in place policies that would make illegal aliens unable to take American jobs, like E-Verify, and unable to collect welfare benefits, like the “America First Act”, and therefore make them unable to stay in our country. In other words, to encourage them to self-deport
As it turns out, self-deportation is not a dream nor a myth but is now a tangible reality. The modest moves of the Trump administration have resulted in one million self-deportations according to White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, interviewed by Fox News, below:
🚨 MAJOR UPDATE: Stephen Miller CONFIRMS that there have been 1 MILLION self-deportations so far.
Holy smokes. It's happening.
"We are WELL on our way here. If we stay the course…illegals understand the consequences of staying…we're gonna see millions MORE self… pic.twitter.com/wp7dW7kKRJ
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) July 17, 2025
This figure was initially labeled as unrealistic by several pro-immigration organizations but numbers published by the Center for Immigration Studies based off of Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys appear to back up Stephen Miller’s claims of a massive surge in illegal alien departures that far exceeds enforcement actions to date. In other words, a tripartite strategy of encouraging illegals to leave, incentivizing illegals to leave, and making it hard for illegals to remain in the United States is proving to be wildly successful.
One of the ways the administration is encouraging illegals to leave is through a series of TV and social media advertisements warning them that they can either leave voluntarily and simply or they can leave through enforcement actions and face fines and detention. This is combined with an incentive strategy of offering illegal aliens $1,000 and a free flight home if they use the CBP HOME App (previously CBP One) to report their illegal status and request help from the Department of Homeland Security in departing the United States.
Finally, the administration has made it harder for illegals to live in the United States. The Trump administration has begun enforcing REAL ID requirements government issued document, such as a driver’s license, and those documents require proof of legal residency in the United States. This change will prevent illegal aliens from flying and from accessing certain federal welfare benefits. It will also allow other states to easily determine the legal status or lack thereof when an illegal alien with a non-compliant ID comes from another state. This was combined with an Executive Order enhancing identity verification for anyone using federal government funded welfare programs.
Most recently ICE issued a change of policy determining that illegal aliens may no longer be released on bond while going through the removal process. Instead they will remain in detention until they are removed from the country. And, ultimately, the huge increase in detention and deportation of illegal immigrants serves as the greatest force encouraging other illegal aliens to leave the country voluntarily rather than to be arrested, fined, and deported by DHS. NBC News reported just days ago that Ice arrests have doubled since Trump came into office and the number of people in ICE detention is at record highs.
In other words, there is no longer any benefit in being an illegal immigrant in the United States and the data shows that many are choosing to leave now that the incentive structure that brought them here is coming undone.
Ultimately what this surge in illegal immigrants self-deporting does is open up the conversation that all of these pro-immigration think tanks are desperate to avoid: voluntary remigration/repatriation. If illegals can be incentivized through ad campaigns and the promise of $1,000 dollar payments to leave this country imagine what ad campaigns and much larger payments could do to promote the unintegrated post-1960 immigrant descended population to leave. I imagine it would be quite a successful policy!
Self-deportation has become a reality with the proper incentive structure and it will soon be time for the inevitable national conversation about what to do with many of the post-1960 immigrants and their descendants who do not identify as American nor feel any particular connection to this country. One recent example is that of Delia Ramirez, a member of Congress from Illinois, who told the Pan-American Conference in Mexico city, and in her native Spanish, that she is a “proud Guatemalan before I’m an American.” Ramirez also admits to being married to an illegal immigrant. A fact she has displayed upon her website.
The American Repatriation Policy Platform
By Mike Adams
In our American Repatriation Policy Platform (ARPP) White Papers suggested paying $72,000 dollars to each American citizen who would wish to voluntarily leave the country. To quote from that policy paper:
“A single repatriation payment represents 12 years of median disposable earnings in Mexico, 3.5 years of median earnings in Japan, and 33 years of income in Ghana. With an average family size of four the typical Black or Hispanic family would leave the United States with $288,000 in the bank, more than enough money to buy a home in a foreign land. An average home in Mexico costs just $90,000 dollars while in Ghana $85,000 to $100,000 can buy a modern, newly constructed, three bedroom home in the heart of the capital region of Accra.“
There is no reason that the tens of millions of post-1965 immigrants and their descendants who feel similarly to Mrs. Ramirez yet don’t possess her immense level of privilege, wouldn’t take up the offer to leave the United States voluntarily and build a new life in their homelands.