Trump administration announces plan to offer US immigrants $1,000 to self-deport

By Charlie Sawyer

Published May 6, 2025 at 12:10 PM

Reading time: 2 minutes

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On Monday 5 May 2025, the Trump administration announced that it had launched a scheme which involves paying immigrants $1,000 to leave the US. It’s been made aggressively clear that one of Donald Trump’s primary goals during his second term is to eradicate immigrants from the country—with the Republican president pursuing numerous incredibly ruthless policies.

According to The Independent, the Department of Homeland Security has referred to this new effort as “travel assistance,” detailing how it is a part of the government’s plans to encourage immigrants to leave the country of their own accord instead of waiting for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to begin deportation proceedings.

In a press release, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem deemed the travel assistance a “historic opportunity,” going on to say that self-deportation was a “dignified way to leave the US.” Noem confirmed that the scheme had already begun coming into effect, explaining that “an illegal alien that the Biden Administration allowed into our country recently utilised the program to receive a ticket for a flight from Chicago to Honduras.”

“Even with the cost of the stipend, it is projected that the use of CBP Home will decrease the costs of a deportation by around 70 percent. Currently, the average cost to arrest, detain, and remove an illegal alien is $17,121,” the statement continued.

The system uses the app CBP Home, where migrants can register their upcoming travel out of the country.

As expected, MAGA enthusiasts expressed their delight with this decision on X, praising Trump and his administration for their swift work:

In other news, Trump has also announced plans to reopen Alcatraz prison, utilising part of the San Francisco Bay building as a place to house vicious and violent repeat criminal offenders. Writing on X, the president noted: “We will no longer be held hostage to criminals, thugs, and judges that are afraid to do their job and allow us to remove criminals, who came into our country illegally. The reopening of Alcatraz will serve as a symbol of Law, Order, and JUSTICE.”

Experts have already begun coming out in droves, claiming that the prison, commonly referred to as “the rock” and visited by millions of tourists every year, is completely unsuitable for housing prisoners. Hugh Hurwitz, who served as acting director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons between May 2018 and August 2019, told the BBC: “To be frank, at first I thought it was a joke. It’s not realistic to think you can repair it. You’d have to tear it up and start over. There’s no security upgrades. No cameras. No fencing. You can’t run a prison.”

So, there we have it. Two very different policy proposals, each with a myriad of problems attached. And, in typical Trump fashion, both yielding to the president’s complete lack of common sense or empathy for humanity.

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