New Report Says Voluntary Departure of Illegals Hits Record High
According to new data just released by the Trump administration, immigration cases ending in voluntary departure have hit a record high.
The Vera Institute of Justice report released Friday shows that the number of people in removal proceedings receiving “voluntary departure” court decisions has significantly increased, particularly among those held in federal detention, ABC News reported.
“This is widespread across the United States,” said Jacquelyn Pavilon, one of the report’s authors. “In three-quarters of U.S. states and territories, the number of voluntary departure decisions increased more than fivefold since the end of Biden’s term.”
In immigration court, voluntary departures are formal requests to depart the U.S. that are approved by a judge, provided the requester is legally permitted to leave. This is different from self-deportations arranged through the Department of Homeland Security, in which illegal immigrants inform the agency that they’re leaving the country to avoid potential detention or removal.
“Many of those people may have legal avenues to remain in the United States,” Pavilon told ABC News. “Voluntary departure decisions do not mean that you do not have legal rights to remain. People are under harsh conditions and making very difficult decisions.”
Voluntary departures jumped from about 800 per month at the end of the Biden administration to more than 8,800 by February 2026, according to the report.
“This increase in voluntary departures is not happening instead of removal orders; it’s actually happening alongside removal orders,” Pavilon said. “And so the piece of the pie that’s shrinking is the number of people who are allowed to remain in the United States.”
The Vera Institute of Justice obtained the data through a Freedom of Information Act request to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees the immigration courts.
Newly appointed immigration judges under this Trump administration have granted voluntary departure at higher rates than judges who have served on the bench longer, while still granting orders of removal at comparable rates, according to the report.
More than 93% of initially detained cases assigned to new judges resulted in the person being required to leave the U.S.
“[Immigration] judges overall are less likely to encourage people to leave the United States if those people have legal counsel,” Pavilon said. “Amongst the detained folks we looked at, Republican-appointed judges are encouraging people in detained immigration proceedings to leave the U.S. at higher rates than Democratic-appointed judges.”
“The Trump administration has been using and leveraging a wide range of strategies to [successfully] carry out its mass deportation agenda,” she added.
Trump’s cruel and unusual punishments convince people to choose voluntary deportation in record numbers: ten times previous administrations. 100,000 separated children in ICE detention. Again. Many dead from injuries and disease in ICE detention centers, 18 so far in 2026 will surpass 2025’s 33 dead. The rumors of these cruelties spread fast in this tight-knit, family-oriented, religious community. I have always said the best marketing PROVED the buyer would be fired unless they bought my stuff. Just loved managing that stuff! Like Trump says, fear is the best motivator. Prove a raise, maybe get a sale; PROVE a firing to easily make a sale, always.
Offering a stipend to buy while advertising cruelty for not buying has great marketing results, just not sure it aligns with our Constitution and who we aspire to be. We may falter at times, we have not reached our founder’s vision yet: “one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” much less our prime directive that “all men are created equal.” Our entire deportation war seems a step in the wrong direction. We are not about revenge, retribution, and worse. I think we can do better, we can achieve more. Our perp walks alone look third-world despot generated; start there. The Trump banner on the DOJ building looks Orwellian dictator in style. Putinesque. Start with stopping the propaganda that props up the cruelty as if the status quo. Stop with inciteful, violent, rhetoric, starting at home with each of our respective tribes. Stop the lies; let’s just stop listening to proven liars.
Today, some even strike out at empathy, compassion, and kindness now calling it a weakness, a disease, a deadly disease. Come on, man, quit being silly. TDS is not a disease and empathy is not suicidal; fake science, fake medicine, who do that voo doo that you swill so well? And why do we keep listening?
Some facts: They get a free plane ride and a $2,600 stipend for volunteering. No bus, plane ride. Trump doubled the payout in 2025 and then moved $250M from refugee aid to do so. Why fund refugees when you want to deport them? Acting Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons issued a memo in July 2025 ending bond hearings for immigrants who entered illegally. Do not pass Go, go directly to jail.
More than 70% of those granted voluntary departure were in immigration detention when they requested to leave. IOW, we caught them and then pay them to leave after putting them in detention. As one Ukrainian said: who gets asylum in Texas, I’m going home rather than that. So, we send a Ukrainian asylum seeker home and take the win?
Judges overall are less likely to encourage people to leave the United States if those people have legal counsel. Basically, if we jail em, they are more likely to accept voluntary deportation than to remain in custody within our current legal system. If they don’t have lawyers, their chances of staying are less. It’s not like they are coming in from the cold, they are already on ICE and we pay them anyways.
At 80,000 voluntaries a year, that’s over 200 years to deport 20 million undocumented. Formal ICE-based deportations are at less than 675K per year which is 29 years to deport 20 million undocumented. This vision is busted before it began. Trump claims 2.2m extra each year through voluntary expulsions and stopping folks at the border (which should not be included since it has no effect on the 20 million Trump claims are already here). This Trumpian number is not substantiated as has not changed in over six months. Now we know the voluntary’s number in the tens of thousands, not millions. BUSTED Trump has proven himself a liar, again, just like his “obliteration” of Iran’s nuclear with no chance of a bomb only to kill thousands to stop Iran’s nuclear with a bomb coming in two weeks. The guy regularly calls himself a liar now.
The fact is this deportation shit is expensive no matter how you cut it and we should reevaluate the benefits versus the sacrifices we are making. Pride cometh before the fall as the Republican tax cutters become Republican tax and spenders building opulent edifices and graven images honoring the Liar Felon King. Tariff taxes, IRMAA means testing taxes, means testing deduction taxes, are killing everyone except the rich and now the war tax from high priced gas is throwing folks into bankruptcy at record numbers: 1q26 up 14%. Small business bankruptcies up 67%. Household debt at all-time highs. Meanwhile, Trump himself runs a legal tab second to none as taxpayers cover his fee’s and his fines. We even pay him millions for just a slight. He’s even offering $1.8B in “severance pay” to 1/6 cop beaters have given $1M to a guy who pled guilty to lying to the FBI. He said he was guilty, Trump said thanks and here’s $1M in taxpayer dollars for your service. Do our soldiers get similar deals? On Trump’s spending alone, we are cruising for a bruising and hellbent to leather to spend more money to rid us of the brown scourge. Around 60-70% of deportees have no criminal record beyond border jumping. The yearly cost to taxpayers for voluntaries is about half a billion in tax dollars per year, many times only to rid us of lawn mowers, painters, planters, and such – NOT FELONS. Half a billion is about what it costs to run 42 average American High Schools, almost one per state is what we give up, for this. Or aid to how many refugees? Trump more than doubled his stipend during 2025. The good news is we save $1B over the legal deportation route; the bad news is we are spending more than double the voluntary rate to get the involuntary out for the same effect: giving up budget dollars that could fund hundreds of high schools for example. It’s simple math. Sometimes the simple math of the choice of exporting a lawn mower instead of educating a high schooler. Seems, at minimum, some perspective on how we are spending our cash is warranted. Yes, we want the criminals out. Do we really want to pay this much, exhibit this much cruelty, to get law-abiding, non-criminal, valuable workers out for a misdemeanor of jumping the border? Do you really want to pay this to lose your barber of over a decade for example? Is that a good use of funds?
IF every undocumented, 20M, left voluntarily, it would cost $100B, if we deport them, $300B. Are you really willing to give all that up for this? Really?