Mitt Romney’s dream of self-deportation has become a reality under President Trump, whose administration is making a full-court press to get illegal immigrants to leave on their own without having to be formally removed.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says it’s better for everyone — including the illegal immigrants themselves — if they leave without an official deportation on their record.
It saves them the sanctions that accompany a deportation, it lets them go on their own schedule, and it saves the government resources that can be pumped into tracking down serious criminals and other high-priority targets.
Ms. Noem has announced a series of ads urging self-deportation and has begun to put teeth behind it with a new registry for illegal immigrants to come forward and admit they are here. If they refuse, they violate the law and become criminals, the secretary said.
“If you are here illegally, we will find you and deport you. You will never return,” Ms. Noem declared in one of the ads. “But if you leave now, you may have an opportunity to return and enjoy our freedom and live the American Dream.”
Mr. Romney famously made self-deportation the crux of his immigration plans in his failed 2012 campaign for the White House. It drew mockery at the time.
But Mr. Trump, who has set a goal of “mass deportations,” has rewritten the immigration playbook to achieve it.
“Self-deportation means that people who come here illegally are weighing the costs and risks and benefits of continuing to stay here illegally with the prospect of going home on their own,” said Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies.
She said the people most likely to go are recent arrivals, who haven’t put down deep roots and who likely have maintained ties back home. That means self-deportation could be a good way of clearing out some of the millions who arrived under President Biden.
“The most elasticity in their desire to go home is going to be the recent arrivals. Even the ones with young kids who were born here,” Ms. Vaughan said. “So many of the people who came under Biden are families. They want to stay together. They don’t want the prospect of having one of the parents arrested and detained. They want to go home on their own.”
That’s the situation of Quebec Vasquez, a Mexican mother who posted to social media last month that she was “beginning self-deportation.”
She came to the U.S. at age 7 and is here under the quasi-status under the Obama-era DACA program, but said she lives in fear of running into a “racist” deportation officer who could arrest and detain her and keep her from her three daughters, who are U.S. citizens by birth.
“I cannot risk being separated from them,” she said as she ticked off her to-do list of getting passports for her kids, getting travel authorization from Mexico, budgeting for her trip and figuring out a job in Mexico.
“Do I want to leave? No, I cannot hold an entire conversation in Spanish,” she said. “But I am not going to risk being sent to some prison somewhere.”
That’s just what Mr. Trump’s critics fear is happening.
Cardinal Robert McElroy, the newly appointed archbishop in Washington, complained in an interview with The National Catholic Reporter last month that the administration will resort to “indiscriminate” arrests and leave people feeling “terrorized in their lives” to get them to self-deport.
Vanessa Cardenas, executive director of America’s Voice, called the new alien registry a “report to deport” scheme. She contrasted it with Mr. Trump’s plans to create a new investor visa for those willing to pony up at least $5 million.
“On the one hand, he’s aiming to expel millions of long-settled hard-working immigrants who embody the values of hard work, opportunity, and the American Dream, and on the other, he’s inviting wealthy foreigners to buy their way into U.S. residency — a potential free pass for corrupt oligarchs,” Ms. Cardenas said.
Ms. Noem’s plans rely on sticks and carrots.
For example, she has barred illegal immigrants from being able to fly on U.S. flights using iffy legal documents — unless they are attempting to self-deport.
Ms Vaughan said there is evidence that immigrants’ behavior can be shifted.
She pointed to instances when states have stiffened their immigration enforcement and it caused some illegal immigrants to leave or new arrivals to pass through and settle elsewhere. That was the case with Arizona, which saw its illegal immigrant population drop by nearly half between 2008 and 2018.
She said if Homeland Security ramps up workplace enforcement and employers shut down jobs, for example, it could make the return decision easier.
Working the other side of the equation are all the benefits the Biden administration granted to unauthorized migrants, such as “parole” or Temporary Protected Status. The Trump administration may have to unwind those protections to leave migrants vulnerable enough to leave, Ms. Vaughan said.
She said there are other considerations. Families, for example, may wait until their kids are done with school in the summer before leaving.
Emilio Gonzalez, who ran U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Bush administration, said self-deportation will work better for Mexicans than for those from outside the continent or the hemisphere. That’s both because of the ease of travel and the risks associated with returning to some of the other countries.
“The further you come from, the less the chance you’re going to go back,” Mr. Gonzalez said.
He also pointed out that some recent arrivals still owe their smugglers for their trip, and will be hesitant to leave the U.S. while they still have to pay off a tab that can run to more than $10,000.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.