The Trump administration is offering undocumented migrants $3,000 and paid travel if they agree to leave the US voluntarily before the end of the year, its latest effort to escalate mass deportations and slash enforcement costs.
Undocumented migrants who self-deport using the CBP Home app will have their travel arranged and paid for by the Department of Homeland Security and will qualify for forgiveness of any civil fines or penalties for failing to leave the US, according to the department. The $3,000 stipend is triple the $1,000 payout the department unveiled in May.
The policy announcement is part of a holiday-season campaign aimed at speeding up deportations. One post on the Homeland Security Department’s X account warned people living illegally in the US that they are “GOING HO HO HOME.”
“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,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement.
Since January 2025, 1.9 million undocumented migrants have voluntarily self-deported and tens of thousands of them have used CBP Home, according to Noem. Those figures could not be independently verified. The app was created during the Biden administration for migrants to schedule asylum interviews but President Donald Trump’s team re-branded it and transformed its purpose.
