The Migrant’s Dilemma

The Mexican-born artist Jorge Samoyoa, known as Bokiso, and his Brazilian-born partner, the painter Julia Godoy, began thinking about leaving the U.S. shortly after Donald Trump’s election last November. Their plans solidified in the summer of 2025, when 90 members of the California National Guard were deployed to MacArthur Park in a heavily immigrant section of Los Angeles. This followed massive Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in Los Angeles’ fashion district, where Samoyoa and Godoy had studios. 

Although the 28-year-old Samoyoa had secured Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival status in 2016, he had inadvertently let his authorization expire, leaving him vulnerable to arrest, detention and deportation. “After the military came to MacArthur Park, we said, ‘OK, this is it,’” Bokiso tells Truthdig. “We decided that Mexico City would be our best bet.”

The pair moved to the outskirts of Mexico City in August, part of a wave of self-deportations driven by the Trump administration’s harsh anti-immigrant policies. Although exact figures are hard to come by, the Department of Homeland Security claims that 2.3 million “illegal immigrants” have either been deported or have left the U.S. voluntarily through self-deportation since January 2025. 

For their own departure, Bokiso and Godoy decided to sidestep the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Home app, the official portal to the DHS’ Project Homecoming self-deportation program. “I contemplated using the app,” says Bokiso, “but ultimately decided that I did not want my name in a government database.” 

He and Godoy are not alone — either in choosing to leave the United States or in refusing to use the CBP app. 

In an email to Truthdig, a DHS spokesperson described Project Homecoming as a “visionary” policy intended to “create a smooth, efficient process for illegal aliens to return home.” As an incentive, the program offers people “a complimentary one-way plane ticket home, a $1,000 exit bonus and forgiveness for any fines previously assessed for failure to depart.” According to the DHS, the program represents “an 80% saving” over the more than $17,000 cost of arresting, detaining and removing someone from the country.  

The DHS is promoting the self-deportation program with a $200 million advertising campaign that warns the undocumented that they will be removed if they do not leave “voluntarily.” As a result, many people are considering whether to hunker down or leave. Once that decision is made, another looms: Whether to use the app or, like Bokiso and Godoy, just go quietly on their own dime.  

“Several of our clients reached the point where they could no longer live [in the U.S.] with the fear of detention, deportation or persecution,” [but] are avoiding U.S. authorities when they self-deport,” says Pedro Rios, San Diego program director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S.-Mexico Border Program. For those people, he says, this followed the questioning of family members and neighbors about the whereabouts of their undocumented relatives and friends, something that propelled the decision to flee the country.  

These decisions are always fraught. According to Hilary Chester, vice president for programs at Jesuit Refugee Service, the immigrants her group works with — some of whom have had their asylum applications or temporary protected status canceled by the Trump administration — are “full of anxiety, fear and distress.” 

“They’re afraid to go to the grocery store or attend Mass, to send their kids to school or go to work,” she says. “People’s uncertainty is enormous. They are making contingency plans and trying to decide if they should stay in the U.S. or return to their country.”  

While these fears are not new, the question of whether to self-deport has gained new urgency since Trump took office, Chester explains. Some people who thought they were on the road to permanent residency have had their asylum applications terminated. Others have had their temporary protected status canceled. This removes their ability to work in the U.S. legally while their asylum applications are pending. “Because they’ve lost the ability to be legally employed, people worry they’ll be moved out of the U.S. or sent to a different country altogether,” says Chester. “But they also worry about the violence and economic instability in their home countries, and are terrified of being forced to return.”

Logistical issues further complicate the decision. When asylum seekers are apprehended at the border, Chester reports that the government typically takes their passports and other documents. They get them back if and when their status is adjusted, but if that process is delayed or completely canceled, it complicates everything. Should they choose to self-deport, not having a passport and other identifying documents makes the process harder. In addition, if they gave birth while in transit, trying to get a passport for a child born in a third country is virtually impossible. 

Additional difficulties arise if an asylum seeker fails to appear in immigration court for a scheduled hearing. “If you do not attend a court appointment, an absentia order can be issued,” Chester says. “This means that you have forfeited your asylum claim.” The upshot, she says, can lead to a ban on reentering the country for up to 10 years.

While the time period can be somewhat shorter if the person was in the U.S. for less than a year, the looming threat of an extended ban raises questions for those seeking to leave on their own.  “People in mixed-status families are in a particularly heartbreaking situation,” says Kaitlyn Amanda Box, a New York-based lawyer specializing in immigration and nationality law. “Kids who are not citizens of their parents’ home countries, or of the U.S., are in difficult straits.” Their parents face a hard choice. Should they bring their kid[s] back to a country they are not a citizen of, or should they leave them in the U.S.? In the latter case, who will step in as their guardian? Even if the child is a U.S. citizen, Box notes, they can’t sponsor their parents for reentry until they reach the age of 21. 

Other advocates stress that those considering self-deportation need to remember that, despite obstacles, there are still extant, if narrowed, pathways to lawful residency.  “Cases that are strong under the existing law can still be presented to a judge — and succeed,” says Olga Byrne, senior director for asylum and legal protection at the International Rescue Committee. 

But for those who do not have a legal pathway to lawful residence, the self-deportation process may seem like the only viable choice.

That’s how 39-year-old Samuel Kangethe saw it. Last August, Kangethe self-deported to Nairobi, Kenya, from Lansing, Michigan. He left behind three children and his U.S.-born wife, Latavia. Samuel had lived in the U.S. for 16 years, during which time he obtained bachelor’s and master’s degrees and built a career as an accountant for several employers, including the state of Michigan. But when an immigration judge determined that his first marriage was fraudulent, he lost his legal status.

According to Latavia, her husband “felt he had no choice but to self-deport due to the stress of the situation. We were a family with a dark, heavy cloud weighing on us. It took a mental toll.”

The consequences of his departure have been significant. When Samuel left, she says, “something in my kids shattered. They are struggling with anxiety, sadness and the heartache that comes from losing a parent. Every morning, we FaceTime with Samuel, and the oldest two kids text him, but we still feel isolated. My 5-year-old keeps asking when Daddy will come home.”

Latavia says she wants government leaders to know that its policies are hurting people who want nothing more than to contribute to their communities. “Samuel contributed to society by working and paying taxes. He wants to be a good family man,” she says. But his fear of being arrested and detained — and having his children see him in prison — motivated his decision to leave and led to months of back-and-forth debate about what was best for himself and his family. While he did not use the CBP app, and paid for his return to Kenya out of pocket, Latvia stresses that Samuel  “sacrificed himself to ensure that he can talk to his children every day. He feared that this would be impossible if he were in detention. “

Still, returning to a country he had not lived in in decades has not been easy, and Latavia reports that Samuel is still looking for work in Kenya. 

Similarly, Bokiso and Godoy say that they are still acclimating to their new lives in Mexico. And while they do not regret the decision to leave, there’s been a lot of adjusting. “I had to revert back to graphic design,” Bokiso says, “because I don’t have a workshop here.” Likewise, Godoy has had to reconfigure how to work because high tariffs and shipping fees have made it costly to send her art to U.S. collectors. “I feel like a stranger in my own country,” Bokiso admits. “I dealt with a lot of discrimination, but the U.S. is still my home. I will always be attracted to it.”