President Joe Biden used it to help illegal immigrants enter the country. President Donald Trump is using it to help them leave. The contrast between how the two presidents are using the U.S. Customs and Border Protection mobile app couldn’t be starker — and it is exactly what the people voted for.
In addition to releasing over 4 million migrants first caught illegally crossing the southern border, Biden admitted an additional 936,500 migrants through the CBP One app. These migrants did not cross the border illegally but instead made appointments using the app to meet with a CBP officer who, after giving them a cursory background check, released them into the country on “humanitarian” parole.
Crucially, migrants admitted through this program did not have to show they qualified for asylum. The background checks administered only checked domestic law enforcement databases. A migrant convicted of rape in Venezuela would not show up on CBP’s computers. Only otherwise inadmissible aliens were eligible for the program. In other words, none of the migrants allowed into the country through the program had any right to be here. Biden illegally created his own temporary visa program out of thin air.
In theory, this program was designed to decrease illegal border crossings by rewarding migrants for waiting in line and registering with CBP. But it completely failed. Illegal border crossings steadily rose after the app was introduced in January 2023, before peaking at 300,000 in December of that year. It was not until Mexico agreed to start busing migrants south away from the border that illegal crossings began to fall, and it was not until Trump took office that they virtually disappeared entirely, reaching lows not seen in decades.
Trump of course shut down Biden’s CBP One app program on his first day in office. Then on March 10, he unveiled a new version that helps illegal immigrants leave the country. At the start of Trump’s use of the app, migrants who signed up and showed they were making progress to self-deportation would be placed on a list that deprioritized them for detention and deportation.
Now the Trump administration has upped the ante. Illegal immigrants who use the new CBP Home app can now book a flight back to their home country paid by the U.S. government. They can also get a $1,000 check from the government once they confirm they are back in their home country.
“If you are here illegally, self-deportation is the best, safest, and most cost-effective way to leave the United States to avoid arrest. DHS is now offering illegal aliens financial travel assistance and a stipend to return to their home country through the CBP Home app,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said when announcing the new program. “This is the safest option for our law enforcement, aliens, and is a 70% savings for U.S. taxpayers.”
According to the Department of Homeland Security, it costs the federal government $17,121 on average to arrest, detain, and remove each illegal immigrant. At $1,000 a pop, plus airfare, self-deportation represents a significant savings to taxpayers per deportation.
In his first four months in office, Trump’s DHS has so far deported a little over 100,000 illegal immigrants. If DHS is able to keep up this pace, that means just 400,000 deportations over a full year span and just 1.6 million over a full four-year term. That would leave Trump far short of undoing Biden’s illegal immigration legacy.
IMMIGRATION HELPED SHAPE AMERICA, BUT ON HER OWN TERMS
But if Trump is able to boost those numbers by encouraging illegal immigrants to self-deport, everybody wins. Illegal immigrants get to go home $1,000 richer, taxpayers save around $15,000 on each self-deported illegal immigrant, and our communities become safer and less financially burdened with each unvetted migrant that returns home.
Whatever legal boundaries Trump is pushing with his Alien Enemies Act deportations — and he is pushing them — the headlines caused by the fight will surely encourage more migrants to fly home before they are shipped to a country they don’t want to go to.