U.S. President Donald Trump, pushing forward on his promises of mass deportations, urged immigrants living in the country illegally to “self-deport” in a new video released by the White House Tuesday morning.
“People in our country illegally can self-deport the easy way, or they can get deported the hard way, and that’s not pleasant,” Trump said in a 90-second video released on the social media, promoting a self-deportation app that he says “saves U.S. taxpayer dollars.”
The app, called CBP Home, replaces an app known as CBP One that was launched under former president Joe Biden. The Biden-era app included a feature that allowed about one million migrants in Mexico to schedule an appointment to request entry at a legal border crossing.
Trump shut down CBP One hours after taking office, leaving migrants with pending appointments stranded and unsure of next steps.
Now, the relaunched CBP Home mobile app has “a self-deportation reporting feature,” Department of Homeland Security announced Monday. The agency says self-deportations are “the safest option” for undocumented immigrants, “while preserving law enforcement resources.”
The app is part of a larger, US$200-million campaign from the government, which includes ads starring Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem encouraging illegal immigrants to leave the country.
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“President Trump has a clear message for those that are in our country illegally. Leave now. If you don’t, we will find you and we will deport you. You will never return,” Noem says in an ad released Tuesday.
Noem concludes by saying: “The choice is yours. America welcomes those who respect our laws. Because a strong nation is a safe nation.”
According to NBC News, TV stations in major cities like Philadelphia, Boston and Dallas have started airing the ad, as well as stations in parts of California, Florida, New York and New Jersey.
In a statement last week, Noem said the app “gives aliens the option to leave now and self-deport, so that many still have the opportunity to return legally in the future and live the American dream,” reports Reuters.
Trump gave the same promise in Tuesday’s video: “If they (self-deport), they will have the opportunity to potentially return legally at some point in the future, but if they do not avail themselves of this opportunity, then they will be found. They will be deported, and they will never be admitted to the United States ever, ever again,” Trump said.
The Trump administration has repeatedly urged migrants in the country illegally to leave.
According to Fox News, the revamped app allows illegal immigrants to “Submit Intent to Depart” and share information about their intent to leave the U.S. There is also a feature that allows them to show proof that they have left the country, but that function is limited to those who were paroled into the U.S. using the Biden-era app.
Experts, however, wonder how many people without legal status would register for what has long been known as “voluntary departure,” or what the government hopes to gain from the new app.
“I’m not sure what their intentions are,” Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, associate policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, told The Associated Press last week. “But they’re creating a bit of a culture of fear around immigration right now,” from highly publicized ICE arrests to sending immigrants to a detention camp at Guantanamo Bay.
The app, she said, could be part of that “targeted public relations campaign” to urge more people to leave the U.S.
Trump has vowed to deport record numbers of people in the U.S. illegally. Trump’s initial deportation numbers lagged the monthly average in fiscal year 2024 under Biden, although Biden’s deportations included many recent border crossers.
The Trump administration has taken other steps that could pressure immigrants in the United States illegally to leave: a regulation set to take effect April 11 would require people lacking legal status to register with the federal government or face fines or jail time.
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Trump sends strong message with highly-publicized migrant deportation campaign
— With files from Reuters and The Associated Press
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