President Donald Trump is looking to pay migrants directly to leave the U.S. The government is planning to launch a self-deportation program that will provide migrants with a stipend and a plane ticket, Trump told Fox Noticias on Tuesday. “What we want to do is we’re going to have a self-deportation program, which we haven’t even announced yet,” he said. “We’re going to give them a stipend, we’re going to give them some money and a plane ticket, and then we’re going to work with them—if they’re good, if we want them back in—to get them back in as quickly as we can.” Trump said the administration’s goal is for “the people to go out [and] come back as legal.” He acknowledged that the U.S. needs workers “for all the industry that’s being created,” seemingly due to his sweeping tariff program. But the government’s focus for now, Trump said, is on getting violent criminals out of the country. The Trump administration earlier repurposed a Biden-era asylum app as a “self-deportation tool.” However, March data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement obtained by NBC News showed that deportations under the second Trump administration continued to fall below Trump’s long-promised blitz.
