The Washington Post is lamenting the “voluntary departure” of more than 80,000 economic migrants amid stepped-up pressure from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
“Judges issued more than 80,000 voluntary departure orders from January 2025 through March of this year … [to migrants] who request to leave on their own terms while giving up the opportunity to seek a new life in the U.S.,” the newspaper reported on May 8.
The numbers were provided by the Vera Institute of Justice, a pro-migration group whose federal funding was cut in 2025. They are also another sign of progress in the administration’s myriad small and large efforts to block migration and speed deportations, amid furious opposition from elite-backed pro-migration groups.
The Post‘s report continued:
The number of people abandoning their immigration cases [for example, asylum claims] is at least seven times as high as the number seen in the last 15 months of the Biden administration, when 11,400 took that option. More than 70 percent of those granted a voluntary departure order during President Donald Trump’s second administration were being held in immigration detention when they made the request, a far higher share than those who departed willingly while Joe Biden was in the White House.
ICE officials accept voluntary departure deals because they allow them to quickly deport migrants, freeing up detention space for the next case. Migrants accept the voluntary deportation deals because the deal gets them out of detention and still leaves them an opportunity to return legally to the United States in subsequent years.
Forced deportations, in contrast, bar the future return of migrants.
In many additional cases, hundreds of thousands of migrants are quietly leaving the United States without telling the government. Their quiet self-deportations preserve the migrants’ hope of a subsequent legal return.
The voluntary departure spike comes after Trump’s deputies stopped releasing illegal migrants from detention after their arrest in the United States, which has been a normal practice by pro-migration White Houses since 1990. The easy releases allowed the migrants to keep working in the United States and to hire lawyers to block their deportations.
In response, pro-migration groups have pushed many judges to restore “bond hearings” where migrants can ask judges for their release from detention. Appeals court judges have split over the administration’s authority to block the hearings, and the issue likely will be decided in 2027 by the Supreme Court.
The pro-migration judges’ “objection [over the bond-hearings ban] is not that Congress hid the authority … but that the authority granted is too large,” one judge wrote as she wrote in support of the administration’s ban on bond hearings.
The pro-migration Vera Institute wants the migrants to legally fight for release after their arrest rather than sign the voluntary departure deals:
The Trump administration is leveraging a wide range of strategies to carry out its mass deportation agenda. Among those facing deportation within the United States immigration court system, more people are receiving a case outcome requiring them to leave the country under the current administration than under the Biden administration. While this increase is coming in part through more removal orders, it is disproportionately driven by an increase in judges granting voluntary departure. Voluntary departure is an undesirable outcome for many, requiring departure from the United States with no guarantee of ever being able to return, a waiver of the chance to pursue relief on a case or appeal, and sometimes involving prolonged detention before a person can leave.
The rising number of voluntary deportations is just one of the administration’s many tactical successes in blocking and reversing the vast inflow of illegal migrants that has been welcomed by the federal government since 1990. For example, officials have reduced migrants’ asylum approvals by roughly 90 percent, which also increases the incentive for migrants to quickly self-deport.
These expanding successes, unsurprisingly, face constant lawsuit resistance and political counter-attacks from wealthy elites who want to grow their wealth and weaken citizens’ power by growing the resident population of at least 20 million non-citizen workers, consumers, and renters.
Elite groups are most determined to maximize the inflow of white-collar migrants — such as H-1B visa holders — to take the well-paid management and professional careers sought by American college graduates.
Progressives in the media are playing a key role in supporting the elite’s agenda. For example, Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post painted a sympathetic picture of one voluntary departure migrant who was welcomed in 2024 by President Joe Biden’s deputies:
One man, a 33-year-old from the Middle East, was detained by ICE in December after a scheduled check-in with an immigration officer. His brother said he began suffering panic attacks, chest pains and banged his head on the door repeatedly during a stint in solitary confinement. He has no criminal record.
His brother said the man is a Christian traumatized by persecution in his mostly Muslim native country, having been beaten, threatened and had his car set on fire. While in ICE detention, an officer raised the possibility of deporting him to Uganda, his brother said, and soon after, he decided to leave voluntarily.
In April, the Post‘s editorial board lamented a claimed shortage of workers:
[The] evidence of worker shortages is everywhere: from cattle operations in Kansas to the crawfish industry in Louisiana. Restaurants and hotels report more than 900,000 vacant jobs … A record number of D.C. restaurants closed last year, thanks to higher operating costs and fewer available workers.
The fix, according to Bezos’ deputies, is a bigger door in the U.S. border: “America needs an orderly border, and the best way to reduce illegal immigration is to create easier legal pathways for people who want to fill jobs that otherwise sit vacant.”
Business lobbies and progressives are pushing for a Democratic victory in the November midterm elections that may help them slow deportations in 2027.
In contrast, Trump’s deputies are amping up the deportations, as citizens prefer.
“Just yesterday, we arrested over 1,900 individuals,” Homeland Security Chief Markwayne Mullin said on May 5, adding, “We have over 60,000 individuals that are currently being detained, going through the process of being deported. Last week, we deported over 2,700 [per day].”
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