Offers of up to $3,000 per person have helped spur more than 200,000 migrants to "self-deport" from the U.S. — but about half made the move while locked up in detention centers, according to a report Tuesday.
The voluntary mass exodus started slowly, with only about 24,000 people signing up during the six months after the Department of Homeland Security launched the widely advertised program in May 2025, Axios said, citing internal agency data.
But White House officials — including deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller — pressured DHS to ramp up the operation, called Project Homecoming, an unidentified source told Axios.
"They wanted like thousands pushed through on a daily basis, and we were putting through like dozens," the source said.
In a statement to The Independent, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson didn't deny the report, saying, "Anyone in the country illegally should self-deport. Otherwise, they will be deported."
In August, a staffer with the since-dissolved, ad hoc Department of Government Accountability — formerly headed by billionaire Elon Musk — reportedly started bringing Project Homecoming case managers into migrant detention centers.
"For the first time, someone walks in and goes, 'Hey, who here just wants to go home?' And everybody's like, 'I want to go home,'" one source told Axios.
DHS also increased the cash incentive from $1,000 to $2,600 in late January, after temporarily raising it to $3,000 during a 10-day period in December that included Christmas.
Migrants who sign up receive free airplane flights, in addition to their so-called exit bonuses.
A total of 132,000 people have left the U.S. through the program, with another 70,000 waiting to leave, according to Axios.
Those numbers reflect an 180 percent increase over the 72,000 Project Homecoming self-deportations reported in March by CNN, which cited an internal DHS document.
Trump campaigned on a pledge to “carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history," with his administration setting an internal goal of expelling 1 million undocumented immigrants annually.
The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute last year published a study that said "historical precedents" suggested cash incentives wouldn't lead to many self-deportations, noting that a comparable 2008 U.S. program "drew just eight participants."
On Tuesday, an institute spokesperson told The Independent that because DHS hasn't released "regular, detailed reporting" on Project Homecoming, "the lack of data transparency around the program, its funding, and its outcomes make it difficult to comment" on the numbers reported by Axios.
"Broadly, we can say that historically, pay-to-go programs in the U.S. and elsewhere have exhibited limited success," spokesperson Michelle Middlestadt said.
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