ICE Has A Plan To Arrest Undocumented Migrants Voluntarily Leaving U.S.: Memo

The Trump administration has put together a plan to send immigration agents to the U.S.-Mexico border to catch migrants who are in the U.S. illegally and are trying to return home voluntarily around the holidays, according to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo obtained by HuffPost.

Under the plan, ICE agents would work with U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officers in “targeted operations” at land ports along the southern border. They would arrest people “attempting to self-remove” after being in the U.S. without legal authorization.

Agents would target commercial buses passing through ports of entry into Mexico, according to the plan document, which was labeled “sensitive.”

Travelers who have no immigration or criminal records and who don’t pose a public-safety risk would be considered “voluntary returns” to their home countries. Others would be processed according to their current immigration cases, the document states, suggesting they would be detained and face formal deportation proceedings.

Officials have tentatively named the effort “Operation Irish Goodbye” ― a reference to the act of slipping out of a bar or party without bidding farewell to your friends. The document offered no clear start date, and operations have been known to change during Donald Trump’s fast-moving immigration crackdown.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, said the agency “does not confirm future operations,” but said it’s “common sense that we need to know who is entering and exiting our country.” They accused former President Joe Biden of letting migrants “invade our country.”

“Under President Trump and Secretary [Kristi] Noem, DHS has secured our borders and ports to ensure no illegal aliens are entering or leaving the U.S. without proper inspection by law enforcement for the safety of Americans,” the spokesperson said in an email.

The administration has been urging undocumented people to return home of their own volition, even using a government app to allow them to report their “intent to part,” and offering $1,000 so-called “exit bonuses.” A mission aimed at scooping up migrants headed out the door voluntarily might seem inconsistent with those efforts.

ICE’s webpage on the so-called self-deportation process urges those who aren’t here legally to “leave on your own initiative.”

“If you’re illegally present in the U.S., you don’t have to — and shouldn’t — wait for ICE officials to arrest you,” the government advises. “Instead, you can leave on your own terms.”

Muzaffar Chishti, an immigration expert at the Migration Policy Institute, said detaining people who are leaving on their own could be aimed at creating repercussions for those with active immigration cases or criminal records. Formal removal proceedings can bar people from reentry for a certain number of years or permanently, and make reentering a crime.

“Removal has consequences,” he said.

However, steering those migrants into deportation proceedings ― as opposed to letting them leave quietly on a southbound bus ― would enable them to seek legal remedies, including applying for asylum.

The “Irish Goodbye” operation could also be about boosting numbers to hype the effectiveness of Trump’s deportation campaign.

The president has promised to remove undocumented immigrants at an unprecedented rate, pressuring officials in his administration to deliver figures that match his campaign rhetoric. Migrants who exit the country undetected through a land port would not be included in the official accounting of removals.

The administration has said it’s on pace to deport nearly 600,000 people by the end of Trump’s first year in office. If so, they would fail to match the 685,000 deportations the Biden administration rang up in the 2024 fiscal year, when the number of illegal border crossings was much higher, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

Chishti said by his group’s calculations the Trump administration is unlikely to match the removal numbers of the Biden administration last year. He was skeptical such an operation at the border would add significantly to the tally.

“They’re getting clearly desperate,” Chishti said. “But you can’t get to scale by removing people who are already offering themselves to be removed, because that number has not been high.”

The White House has also said that its deportation campaign is aimed at ridding the country of the “worst of the worst,” though recent data has shown that most of the immigrants ICE is detaining in high-profile urban operations do not have criminal records.

For instance, in Washington, D.C., 84% of those arrested by ICE have faced no criminal charges in the U.S., and a mere 2% have a conviction for a violent crime, according to a New York Times analysis.

Do you work at the Department of Homeland Security? You can reach our reporter on Signal at davejamieson.99.