Trump ad campaign spends millions to encourage self-deportation : NPR

Sitting at her kitchen table in Durham, N.C., a woman who goes by S lets out a deep sigh recalling the first few days of the second Trump administration. Her husband holds her hand; in the background the kids’ cartoons are blasting.

Both S and her husband are immigrants without legal status in the U.S., which is why she’s asked NPR to withhold her full name. Their two children are U.S. citizens.

“I felt so anguished,” S said. “I didn’t want to do anything in the house, I just wanted to sleep and sleep and wake up to find it was all over, it had all been a dream.”

She and her husband started staying up all night discussing whether to go back to their native El Salvador, and take the kids with them.

They haven’t reached a decision yet. But they said they started hearing about other Latino parents in their community getting children their U.S. passports — so in case they leave, the kids can later return. S and her husband decided to do the same.

Meanwhile, they continue debating the question many immigrants in the country without legal status are now asking themselves: has the time come to leave the U.S.? To self-deport?

Self-deportation is one of the centerpieces of the second Trump administration’s immigration policy. President Trump has launched a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign encouraging immigrants to self-deport. His policies, experts say, have aimed to make life difficult through highly publicized immigration arrests, sending migrants to El Salvador for detention, and stripping protections from once-safe spaces like schools, churches and hospitals.

To those seeing quality of life crumble, an administration message offers a directive: leave the country now and keep the chance of coming back some day. Or risk deportation and a permanent closed door. The Department of Homeland Security on social media has threatened to leverage fines of $998 per day against anyone who might have stayed in the U.S. despite receiving a final order of removal, and a fine of up to $5,000 if someone claims they will self deport and don’t.

“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 speaking from the Oval Office in one of the administration’s new ads.

An idea Mitt Romney floated

It’s not a new idea: self-deportation was a notable part of GOP candidate Mitt Romney‘s presidential campaign back in 2012. 

“The answer is self-deportation, which is people decide that they can do better by going home because they can’t find work here because they don’t have legal documentation to work here,” Romney said on the debate stage in Tampa, Fla. “We’re not going to round people up.”

Back then Donald Trump, several years before he launched his own political campaign, called it a “crazy policy” and “maniacal.” Speaking to conservative news outlet NewsMax after that election, he said it was part of the reason Romney lost: by promoting a policy that was deemed unkind to Hispanic-Americans.

“The Democrats didn’t have a policy for dealing with illegal immigrants, but what they did have going for them is they weren’t mean-spirited about it,” Trump told NewsMax. “He lost all of the Latino vote. He lost the Asian vote. He lost everybody who is inspired to come into this country.”

The idea was seen as ludicrous, even becoming the butt of a popular comedy skit. Why would anyone in their right mind just pick up and self-deport?

Most immigration experts argue that if the quality of life in countries that people leave is more dangerous, desperate or deadly than what people might find in the U.S., then no immigration deterrence would fully work.

As Adam Isacson, from the Washington Office on Latin America, a research and advocacy group, puts it: “There’s not that much you can do to make the experience more miserable for people than the conditions that they’re fleeing to begin with.”

But more than 10 years after Romney’s idea, the politics, and the country, have changed. More Latinos turned out for Republicans last year than in prior elections — at 43% in one exit poll, and Trump campaigned heavily on border security.

Mari hugs her children, all of whom are U.S. citizens. Mari has been adamant about staying in the U.S., while her husband says it’s time for them to go back to Guatemala.

Jasmine Garsd/NPR

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Jasmine Garsd/NPR

Illegal immigration, once seen as a product of a broken system that candidates promised to fix, is now discussed as a threat to be rid of, one of “human traffickers, drug smugglers, and gang members.”

For the last few months, for many immigrant families across the U.S., the basic quality of life has plummeted — in some cases becoming nothing short of nightmarish.

“We’re scared. We stay indoors all day,” Rosa, a heavily pregnant Honduran woman in Waukegan, Ill., told NPR back in January.

She was in line at a food bank run by the United Giving Hope Church, and asked that her last name be withheld due to fear of apprehension (she is in the U.S. without legal status). She said she’d been missing appointments with her OB-GYN for fear of being arrested by immigration officials at the hospital.

As she spoke, a woman named Melina walked by: a Mexican woman, also without legal status in the U.S. — she asked that her last name be withheld. She mentioned she’d gotten her children their passports, and is hoping to leave soon.

Pastor Julie Contreras, who created the food bank in Waukegan, said she’s been hearing from so many parishioners considering self-deportation, she’s planning on holding information sessions about how to get your U.S.-born children their passports.

Trump officials craft the message 

Less than a month after inauguration, Trump’s Homeland Security Department issued what it calls a domestic and international $200 million ad campaign. In a video, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stands in front of American flags and offers a warning.

“If you are here illegally, we will find you and deport you. You will never return,” Noem says in the ad, which features cinematic music over visuals of Trump in the White House contrasted with footage of the border and individual mugshots.

“But if you leave now, you may have an opportunity to return and enjoy our freedom and live the American Dream,” Noem says.

The government in March spent about $2.8 million on TV and radio ads in English across 43 stations in several major markets, with another $373,000 for TV and radio ads in Spanish, according to AdImpact data. The administration is also promoting ads on social media — with Spanish subtitles.

Vice President JD Vance last month traveled to Eagle Pass, Texas, along the U.S.-Mexico border, with the same message.

“One of the ways we want to make sure we are enforcing our border is that we make it easier for people who are here illegally to go back home on their own accord,” Vance told reporters.

A few days after Vance’s visit, Customs and Border Protection updated the CBP One App, now rebranded as CBP Home. During the Biden administration, the app facilitated quick asylum claims. Now, the app allows people to notify the government of their “intent to voluntarily depart” from the U.S.

DHS did not respond to questions about how the app was being used to reach people who are already in the U.S., but they said there is incentive to use it.

“Those who self-deport may have the opportunity to return legally in the future and live the American dream,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in an email. “If they don’t, we will find them, we will deport them, and they will never return.”

McLaughlin told NPR that 5,000 people have used the app to self-deport as of the start of April. Immigration researchers estimate some 11 million people in the U.S. lack legal status.

Advocates say life becoming more difficult

But Adriana Cadena, director of the Protecting Immigrant Families Coalition, doesn’t think the administration is offering enough of an incentive. Right now those without legal status may have to wait up to 10 years before attempting to return.

“I would think that immigrants are smart enough to know the rhetoric is coming from the administration and not buy into this perception that if you leave you’ll be able to come back. There is no proof,” Cadena said, adding that the administration hasn’t built trust with communities, nor offered clarity on what the policy means.

Regardless of who believes the policy, the goal of making life difficult for immigrants is succeeding, experts and families said in interviews.

The administration’s policies that affect immigrants’ access to medical care, food access and education also affect U.S.-born children in mixed families.

In February, Trump signed an order “ending taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal aliens.” Immigrants without legal status already generally do not qualify for federal benefits. But immigration law experts say such policies do have an impact on U.S. citizen children, as well as other family members with legal status.

Several family’s NPR spoke to say their children’s mental health has been severely affected. A woman named Mari, in Maryland, who asked that NPR withhold the family’s last name because she and her husband are without legal status and fear deportation, says their youngest daughter, age 6, has been having panic attacks. “She’s been crying at school,” Mari says. “Having very bad stomach aches. A social worker had to step in.”

“I was just feeling sad,” her daughter told us. “Mom told me it would be ok. I worry something will happen to her, like something will get her. Immigration is taking persons to their state where they grew up. My mom is from Guatemala. We are from here.”

Mari’s husband, a roofer, wants to go back to Guatemala now. He wants the kids to get their U.S. passports if the situation in the U.S. devolves, Mari said. They recently went to the Guatemalan embassy to make sure that if they need to go, their kids have all the appropriate paperwork.

But Mari doesn’t want to leave. She said she wants her daughters to have access to an education, and is worried they’ll be targeted by gangs back in Guatemala. The debate is causing a rift in the marriage: she and her husband argue about this often, she said.

“He says we can’t live like this anymore,” Mari said. “And I say, ‘No. My children were born here. My daughters are going to school. We are staying.'”

The arguing has exacerbated her daughter’s anxiety. So for now, they’ve been telling her a different story: “Baby, if things keep getting worse, we’re going to go on a vacation.”