Trump Has A Powerful Strategy To Get Immigrants To 'Give Up'

Source: HuffPost

Trump Has A Powerful Strategy To Get Immigrants To 'Give Up'

The Trump administration is working overtime to pressure people into abandoning their legal rights and leaving the United States on their own.

By Matt Shuham
Aug 12, 2025, 05:45 AM EDT

After more than a decade of living in the United States without incident, 19-year-old Emerson Colindres, a budding soccer star who had just graduated high school, was arrested this summer during an immigration check-in and spent two weeks in a county jail before being deported to Honduras.

Days later, his mother and sister made a decision that likely pleased the Trump administration: They followed Colindres out of the United States.

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That sentiment, variations of which have reverberated across the country, is exactly what President Donald Trump wants. There are millions of undocumented people in the United States ― far more than Trump will likely be able to deport on his own. So the administration is working overtime to create a pervasive atmosphere of punishment, uncertainty and fear that it hopes will convince people in the immigration legal system to leave the United States on their own.

The Trump administration has claimed that those who “self-deport” now will get the chance to reenter the U.S. later. (“Self-deport” is not a legal term; two Mexican American satirists invented it over 30 years ago.)

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Read more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-voluntary-departure-self-deportation-cbp-home_n_6862d570e4b060bc661e0e2b