Nearly three in ten deportation cases in 2025 ended with illegal immigrants choosing to leave the United States voluntarily — the highest share on record. The figure, drawn from data reviewed by CBS News, caps a year in which the percentage of voluntary departures among detained individuals climbed almost every month, reaching 38 percent by December.

The math is straightforward. The message is clearer: people who entered the country illegally are calculating that it's better to leave on their own terms than wait for the government to escort them out.

Breitbart reported that the Trump administration didn't just ramp up enforcement — it built an off-ramp. DHS launched a stipend program through the CBP Home app, offering illegal immigrants a payment and a free flight back to their home countries in exchange for voluntary departure. In January, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced the stipend had been increased to $2,600.

Noem did not mince words:

"To celebrate one year of this administration, the U.S. taxpayer is generously increasing the incentive to leave voluntarily for those in this country illegally — offering a $2,600 exit bonus. Illegal aliens should take advantage of this gift and self-deport because if they don't, we will find them, we will arrest them, and they will never return."

That's a carrot backed by an unambiguous stick. And the numbers suggest people are listening.

Officials have suggested that approximately two million illegal immigrants have self-deported within the last year. Bureau of Labor Statistics data tells a broader but consistent story: the foreign-born population in the United States declined by 2.3 million during the first year of Trump's second term.

The Biden baseline

Context matters. Under Joe Biden, the foreign-born population grew by 7.4 million over four years. That's not a statistic that requires editorial commentary — the scale speaks for itself.

An entire era of federal immigration policy operated on the assumption that enforcement was either impossible, undesirable, or both. The border was treated less like a boundary and more like a suggestion.

What the current numbers reveal is how much of that growth was driven by people who understood — correctly — that the previous administration had no serious interest in removing them. When the calculus changed, behavior changed with it. Deterrence works when it's credible. It was not credible under Biden. It is now.

CBS News noted an important caveat: the analysis behind the 38 percent December figure excludes individuals processed through expedited removal — those who never appeared before an immigration judge.

That means the voluntary departure numbers represent only a slice of total removals. The actual scale of people leaving the country, whether by choice or by enforcement, is almost certainly larger than these figures alone suggest.

"The percentage of voluntary departures among those detained grew nearly every month of 2025, reaching 38% in December. The analysis does not include those who were not given a hearing before an immigration judge, such as immigrants in expedited removal proceedings."

In other words, the record-setting self-deportation trend is the floor, not the ceiling.

Enforcement as policy, not theater

For years, the immigration debate in Washington followed a dreary script. One side would demand enforcement. The other would call enforcement inhumane. Nothing would happen. The illegal population would grow. Rinse and repeat.

What the self-deportation data demonstrates is that enforcement doesn't have to mean agents physically removing every single person who overstayed a visa or crossed the border illegally.

When the federal government communicates — through policy, through rhetoric, through action — that illegal presence in the United States carries real consequences, a significant number of people make their own decision to leave. Swelling detention populations and a widening enforcement footprint changed the atmosphere. The atmosphere changed behavior.

This is the part of the immigration conversation that the left has never wanted to have. The argument was always that mass deportation was logistically impossible, therefore enforcement itself was futile, therefore the only option was some form of amnesty or tolerance.

The self-deportation numbers demolish that framing. You don't need to physically locate and remove every illegal immigrant in America. You need to make the cost of staying higher than the cost of leaving.

A $2,600 stipend and a plane ticket home is a fraction of what it costs to detain, process, and deport a single individual through the legal system. It's a fraction of what illegal immigrants cost state and local governments in services every year. The program is fiscally rational, operationally efficient, and — most importantly — voluntary. Nobody is being dragged anywhere. They're choosing to go.

Two million decisions

Every one of those estimated two million self-deportations represents an individual who weighed their options and concluded that the United States under this administration is no longer a place where illegal presence will be quietly tolerated. That's not cruelty. That's sovereignty functioning as intended.

The foreign-born population shrank by 2.3 million in a single year after growing by 7.4 million in the four years prior.

One administration opened the door. The other made clear it was closing — and gave people a chance to walk through it on their own before it shut.

Millions took the hint.