The United States announced on Wednesday that it will increase the financial incentive for irregular migrants in the country to $2,600 to encourage them to leave voluntarily or to 'self-deport.' The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced this in a statement, referring to the increase in the incentive—from $1,000 previously—as a 'gift' to mark the anniversary of Republican Donald Trump's assumption of the presidency. In the statement, DHS asserted that since January 2025, 2.2 million people in the country irregularly have self-deported voluntarily, with 'tens of thousands' having done so using the CBP One app. However, these figures provided by DHS have been questioned by analyses from immigration experts, as the agency 'has not provided data' to back them up. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported in December that it has deported a total of 622,000 people since Trump took office. However, an analysis published last week by the Brookings Institution questions this figure and estimates the actual number is much lower, between 310,000 and 350,000 deportations. This is below the 778,000 repatriations carried out in the last full fiscal year of the Biden administration and far from the Trump team's promise to reach one million deportations per year.
