Half of Trump’s ‘Voluntary’ Deportations Came From Inside ICE Cells

Leaked figures show Project Homecoming signs up deportees in 40 ICE lockups—branding their departures “voluntary.”

Photo Illustration by Eric Faison/The Daily Beast

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Half of the “voluntary” departures under Donald Trump’s flagship self-deportation scheme have involved migrants already locked up in ICE detention, leaked program data reveals.

Project Homecoming is marketed by the Department of Homeland Security and its scandal-hit contractor, Salus Worldwide Solutions, as a “humane” alternative to arrest. Migrants who “choose” to leave the U.S. get $2,600 and a free flight, sparing them, in the words of Salus boss and Trump crony William Walters III, “the indignity of prolonged detention in for-profit prisons.”

But internal figures first reported by Axios show around half of the program’s claimed cases —the data suggests 132,000 have left, and that 70,000 more are in the process of doing so—have involved people already in ICE custody, with Salus case managers working inside 40 detention sites.