Immigrants are giving up their claims for humanitarian protection and opting to depart the United States in exponentially higher numbers under the Trump administration, mostly from the austere confines of federal detention centers where they increasingly face prolonged stays.
Immigration judges issued more than 80,000 “voluntary departure” orders from January 2025 through March of this year, according to court data obtained by the Vera Institute of Justice and shared with The Washington Post. Such orders are granted to immigrants who request to leave on their own terms while giving up the opportunity to seek a new life in the U.S. They are not given a formal deportation order, which could make it easier for them to return legally in the future.
The number of people abandoning their immigration cases is at least seven times as high as the number seen in the last 15 months of the Biden administration, when 11,400 took that option. More than 70 percent of those granted a voluntary departure order during President Donald Trump’s second administration were being held in immigration detention when they made the request, a far higher share than those who departed willingly while Joe Biden was in the White House.
The shift is one of the most striking data points to emerge from Trump’s mass deportation campaign and appears to be part of his broader effort to purge millions of immigrants from the U.S. Officials have promoted the option on social media and in posters plastered in detention centers and courts. Immigration attorneys say the spike reflects the mounting strain on people who are facing long stints in detention as they await a hearing in immigration court, where it has become increasingly difficult to win asylum.
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During the last half of the Biden administration, judges issued an average of 750 voluntary departure orders a month. Those numbers began rising steadily after Trump returned to the White House and dispatched armed, masked immigration officers into cities to arrest undocumented immigrants who had been off-limits under the Biden administration because they were not serious criminals.
In July, a month after the Los Angeles raids, the number of immigrants being granted a voluntary departure order spiked to 6,370. That same month, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Todd M. Lyons, issued a memo declaring that immigrants who arrived in the U.S. illegally would no longer be eligible for a bond hearing as they fight deportation proceedings in court. That has meant many immigrants are being kept in custody for the duration of their removal proceedings, though some have successfully challenged their detentions in U.S. district courts.
The number of people granted voluntary departure has especially skyrocketed this year. More than 9,000 people received permission from a judge to leave in March. Attorneys say many are choosing to leave because they are frightened by the possibility of being stuck in detention indefinitely.
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In the six-month span from September to February, the states with the highest number of people agreeing to voluntary departure in immigration courts were Texas (12,400) and Louisiana (5,400), according to the report. Florida, Georgia and California each posted more than 3,000 cases, while New York registered 1,500.
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The post Immigrants Are Giving Up Their Cases and Leaving the U.S. In Soaring Numbers appeared first on American Renaissance.
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