The Feds Are Offering Migrants Cash to Self-Deport. Lawyers Call These Incentives Misleading.
The Department of Homeland Security’s new initiative to pay migrants for self-deportation is troubling not for what it offers, but for what it conceals. On paper, the promise of a stipend, waived fees, and the chance to return legally may sound like a humane alternative to detention and forced removal. In reality, immigration law does not support many of these guarantees, meaning the campaign risks misleading vulnerable people into making choices that could permanently close the door on their future in the United States.
Far from a fair solution, the program cloaks coercion in the language of opportunity. Migrants already face the daily pressures of uncertainty, fear of enforcement, and limited access to accurate legal counsel. For the government to present self-deportation as a pathway forward—while quietly sidestepping the legal and practical obstacles—is not reform, but manipulation. Rather than offering “carrots,” this initiative undermines trust and misuses public funds in a way that exploits the very people it claims to assist.
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