How Trump's "self-deportation" machine has ramped up

Per Axios, the Trump administration's self-deportation program is reshaping immigration enforcement faster than anyone anticipated. Launched as a voluntary incentive—offering twenty-six hundred dollars to immigrants who choose to leave—the program has already processed about one hundred thirty-two thousand departures, with roughly seventy thousand more signed up and headed out. Called Project Homecoming by the Department of Homeland Security, it's cost nearly six hundred million dollars so far. But the economics are compelling: each self-deportation runs roughly twenty-five hundred dollars, compared to over eighteen thousand for forced removal. That gap has intensified White House pressure to accelerate the effort, and by mid-July, the program was on pace to exceed two hundred thousand total departures. About half involved detained immigrants. Since case managers began working inside forty ICE facilities, average detention time for self-deporters dropped from fifty days to seventeen, freeing critical bed space. The uncertainty: the government contract expires by the end of August, with no word yet on whether funding will continue uninterrupted.

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