Customs and Border Protection’s Home app, complete with a “self-deportation reporting feature” for undocumented migrants who plan to leave the United States. It’s a repurposed version of the CBP One app, which the Biden administration had used to process asylum claims from people waiting at the US-Mexico border.
According to DHS, the old app will automatically update to the new version, which it noted is “also available free across mobile application stores.” It’s part of a $200 million ad campaign announced in February, telling migrants they will be “hunted down and deported” unless they “leave now,” which DHS says may give them “an opportunity to return and enjoy our freedom and live the American Dream.”
For now, it is unclear how these reports will be used, or how the Trump administration plans to convince people to use the app, as voluntary departures are not otherwise recorded by migration authorities. It is also unclear how authorities plan to use the information. But Bindhu Vijayan, the executive director of Beyond Legal Aid, which operates on a community-activism-lawyering model, described the app as misleading.
Vijayan told Jacobin:
If someone has already decided to leave, regardless of the consequences, they will proceed accordingly. However, for those who are under the impression that this is a viable pathway for return, they are being misled — manipulated through partial truths and a lack of full disclosure. This is not just misinformation; it’s a calculated strategy that plays on fear and uncertainty, layering coercion upon coercion. The rhetoric surrounding this issue feeds into that fearmongering, reinforcing a narrative designed to control.
The term “self-deportation” may take many readers back to the 2012 presidential primary, when Republican candidate Mitt Romney said that instead of mass deportations, he’d influence migrants to leave the US voluntarily, by cutting them out of the…
Auteur: Nyki Duda
