Bribing Illegals to Self-Deport Might Be the Only Real Solution Available to Trump
Over the weekend, Breitbart had a piece about President Trump’s reference to a “touchback amnesty” — or, perhaps more accurately, providing an incentive for illegal aliens to self-deport in large numbers in the hope that some of them might be able to come back legally.
President Donald Trump wants to help illegal migrants self-deport from the United States as some of his supporters complain about the slower-than-hoped pace of deportations and Democrats launch a massive resistance.
“We’re doing a self-deportation [program], and we’re going to make it comfortable for people, and we’re going to work with those people to come back into our country legally — the good ones,” Trump told the Spanish-language division of Fox News. He added:
The only thing I haven’t determined is what are we going to do? We’re going to give him a stipend, we’re going to give him 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, we’re going to work with them to get them back in as quickly as we can.
Here was Trump talking about the plan…
.@POTUS says he’ll soon announce a program to help illegals self-deport: “We’re going to give them a stipend … and a plane ticket.” pic.twitter.com/MszlJH6Skj
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 15, 2025
This doesn’t have universal approval within the conservative movement, though…
But Trump’s deport-and-return comments were denounced by ALIPAC, a grassroots anti-immigration group.
“Trump is indicating he is willing to bait-and-switch his own voters to provide illegals and their employers with the same kind of ‘Touchback Amnesty’ originally promoted by the globalist wing of the Republican Party through Mike Huckabee and Mike Pence,” said William Gheen, founder of ALIPAC.us. “This form of Amnesty directly contradicts and undermines his promise of mass deportations of illegals.”
Before you throw a fit over this, let’s understand the situation we’re in.
Let’s remember that the Trump administration’s strategy to clear the decks of the migrant invasion that the Biden regime set loose on the country was threefold.
First, border czar Tom Homan and the great folks at ICE would prioritize the removal of dangerous criminals — like MS-13 and Tren de Aragua gang members and others for whom there is a paper trail of criminality. Second, illegals with pre-existing deportation orders — there are almost a million and a half of those — are up for active efforts at deportation.
And then, after that, finding a way to send home the rest of the some 20 million-plus illegals living in America. Most of those people are biding their time until either the Democrats control the White House and Congress and can pass a mass amnesty for illegals, or until their children become citizens and that leverages the family into some sort of protected status, if not a path to citizenship.
This is the key reason why the birthright citizenship question is so central to the immigration debate.
And it’s instructive that the first round of Homan’s deportations, the round which is so obviously a good and necessary move, has nonetheless brought on what looks like a politically suicidal response from the entire Democrat Party. (RELATED: Trump Versus the Courts (Again))
I’ve already written two columns about the Kilmar Garcia mess, which is as close to seppuku for the Democrats as you can get and brings on questions about exactly how bought-off by MS-13, the cartels, and Tren de Aragua they actually are. I don’t need to go back into that controversy, other than to note that the new narrative, now that the public disgust for Chris Van Hollen, Matthew Frost, and some of the other B-team members white-knighting for Garcia has begun to crystallize, is they’re not defending MS-13 but instead the “rule of law” and “due process.” (RELATED: Five Quick Things: The Hill They’ve Died On)
These are people who had no problem with January 6 protesters rotting in solitary confinement without trial for committing no crime worse than trespassing, and now they’re screeching about an illegal-alien, tattooed MS-13 gangster with no less than SEVENTEEN different judicial engagements somehow not having quite enough “due process” before he was sent home.
There obviously isn’t any good faith in that advocacy. This is a holding tactic. It’s done in order to grind the Trump administration down and turn the public against deporting illegals — or at minimum, to make it so expensive and so tiresome a process that the administration’s energy is then directed to other things.
Remember the hue and cry the trans crowd put on all over the country when red-state legislatures in places like Idaho and Tennessee started passing bills making the genital mutilation and chemical castration of children illegal? Those circuses weren’t designed to persuade anyone — instead, they were designed to make it so unpalatable for ordinary legislators that they’d turn on their own people for fighting the fight. Country-club Republican legislators ran on cutting the corporate tax rate; they didn’t put themselves through the electoral ringer so they could take death threats in committee hearings from unhinged he-shes who make Dylan Mulvaney look like Cindy Crawford.
It’s a demoralization tactic. They’re willing to burn themselves down with the public so as to achieve this…
These deportation numbers are very very very very very very, very, very, very bad
Almost no one is being deported
It’s very low number
We need answers
— Anthony Sabatini (@AnthonySabatini) April 15, 2025
When other conservatives start talking like Sabatini does, you’ll know that the lawfare project will have at least partially succeeded.
And the Kilmar Garcia mess is only part of what’s going on. Have you heard about this bizarre story out of New Mexico?
NEW: Here is a copy of the sworn statement signed by Jose Hermosillo. During questioning, which was done in Spanish, Hermosillo stated he:
-Was born in Mexico
-Was not a U.S. citizen
-Crossed the border illegally via the desert
-Wanted work
-Was in the U.S. illegally https://t.co/yR9L31XTYc pic.twitter.com/BCSZoStYjh— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) April 21, 2025
If you’re smelling a rat in this case, congratulations, because clearly there is one. Here’s a guy who was an American citizen, but he crossed the border from Mexico, found the border officials, and did everything illegals do, had nothing to identify himself as a U.S. citizen, and was detained the way illegals are detained. And then his family showed up with his paperwork.
Nobody does this. It doesn’t make sense. The only way it does make sense is as a sabotage of Trump’s effort to deport illegals. Either this guy is an activist or he’s a patsy somebody is paying to spend 10 days in a deportation center so a narrative can be pushed, but it’s hard to imagine this was a good-faith mistake on his part, which led to his detention.
What I’m getting at is that there is a full-on campaign by the Democrats and the various tentacles of their media-political-nonprofit apparatus to sabotage and grind down Trump’s deportation effort. We already know how much they invested in bringing on the migrant invasion in the first place and why it was done; why wouldn’t they invest even more to protect the status quo they created?
Given that, and given the difficulty of having to try to mass-deport even the worst of the illegals at a time the Democrats are demanding the same level of legal wrangling to deport each and every MS-13 or TDA gangster that one might expect to execute a murderer, the only way Team Trump is going to move the needle in draining away the migrants is to induce them to self-deport.
Obviously, the best way to do this is to cut off the spigot of federal funding through the welfare programs, which have been flowing freely to the illegals.
Another stick in the government’s hands is the $1000-per-day fine they’re imposing on illegals who’ve been given deportation orders and still haven’t left (almost none of them have that amount to spend)…
Illegal aliens should use the CBP Home app to self-deport and leave the country now.
If you don’t, you will face the consequences. This includes a fine of nearly $1,000 per day that you overstay your final deportation order.@TriciaOhio pic.twitter.com/PQpfJ0f4NE
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) April 13, 2025
Another item came from an interesting article by Daniel Frederick Wasserman at the Harvard Law Review — namely, using existing federal law to interfere with the practice of sending money home to the old country…
The Trump Administration has long been interested in remittances. The first Trump Administration limited family remittances to Cuba in 2019 under the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA). (Cuba is the only country to which the President may apply the TWEA outside of a time of war.) In 2023, then-Senator and now-Vice President Vance introduced a bill named the Withholding Illegal Revenue Entering Drug Markets Act to tax all remittances out of the United States at ten percent, intending to tackle illegal migration. Last month, the Administration ordered money transmitters along the southwest border of the United States to file currency reports with the government for transactions over $200, in the hopes of combatting drug cartels.
Limiting personal remittances sits at the intersection of two Trump Administration priorities: limiting capital outflows and curbing migration. Remittance payments to Latin America have jumped immensely — by 26.7 percent in 2021 alone — which is likely a result of the recent explosion in migration to the United States. There are now $160 billion dollars in remittances sent to Latin America and the Caribbean every year, increasingly via businesses with booming valuations that promise low rates and easy processing.
Many migrants enter the United States in order to send remittances to family and friends back home and may voluntarily return to their countries of origin if they were no longer able to do so. And some remittances are used to pay “migrant smugglers,” creating a cycle of migration. Furthermore, personal remittances make up more than a quarter of some Latin American countries’ gross domestic product, so the threat of limits are a useful negotiating tool in the hands of the President.
Limiting personal remittances to countries from which the United States received high levels of illegal migration would thus serve President Trump’s agenda. A plan might look like his 2019 executive order to limit family remittances to Cuba to $1,000 per quarter. Exact dollar-amount ceilings are hard to predict, but the Trump Administration likely would choose country-by-country ceilings low enough to encourage illegal migrants to return to their home countries, but high enough to ensure that resulting hardships in those countries do not rebound on the United States. If it is not logistically overwhelming, the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) could issue licenses to those with proof of legal residency who wish to avoid these ceilings.
There is good news here, which is that self-deportations already are happening at a quickening pace just based on the signals Trump has already sent out…
Thousands of migrants scared of deportation by President Trump are fleeing to the Great White North, leading to a surge in asylum seekers to Canada not seen in years.
At least 1,411 migrants attempted to cross the border in upstate New York alone in the first two weeks of April, according to data from the Canadian Border Services Agency.
That’s more than the entire month of March, when 1,356 people made the journey, which was already double the average of the previous months.
And this is just the number of people turning themselves into Canadian authorities to claim asylum — the actual number of border-crossers is likely higher, with many trying to illegally penetrate the largely unguarded border.
But to drive the numbers Team Trump will need, at some point, it’s going to involve what he’s talking about now — essentially, bribe money. Free plane tickets and a self-deportation bonus.
These people came here for money. Making them leave for money is the surest way to get rid of them.
Especially when the people who invited them in the first place are going to sabotage any efforts to make even the worst of them leave.
And given the hundreds of billions of dollars illegals cost the federal government in Medicaid, housing, SNAP, Social Security disability, and other payments, a one-time buyoff that results in ending all that ongoing swag will actually show up as good math.
Even as greasy as it might make you feel.
Remember, Trump is a dealmaker more than an ideologue. He’s trying to make a deal that solves a problem. You’re going to have to let him cook a little.
All I’ll say is that instead of getting angry at Trump for using carrots as well as sticks to drain the illegals out of the country, you might consider limiting your fury in the direction of the people who caused this problem in the first place.
READ MORE from Scott McKay:
Five Quick Things: The Hill They’ve Died On
The Masochistic Democrats Hate You — And Beg You to Hate Them Back
The Glorious Impending Death of Temu?
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