DHS tells illegal immigrants to go home for the holidays — and stay there

Homeland Security offered illegal immigrants a new Christmas-season deportation bargain: Go home for the holidays and stay there, and you can get a $3,000 bonus from Uncle Sam.

That’s triple the regular “self-deportation” bonus the Trump administration has been offering, and it’s in addition to the free flight home the government has said it will give to those who register their self-deportation ahead of time.

Secretary Kristi Noem said the “holiday stipend” is a particularly sweet carrot, and a better offer than the stick — deportation — that the government has made clear it’s also willing to use on rank-and-file illegal immigrants.

“Illegal aliens should take advantage of this gift and self-deport because if they don’t, we will find them, we will arrest them, and they will never return,” she said in announcing the bonus.

The department called it a “limited time offer” and “the best gift that an illegal alien can give themselves and their families this holiday season.”

DHS announced the bounty with a slick press release that replicated a Christmas advertisement. It showed a decorated Christmas tree in a cozy home, with a snowy landscape outside.

“Until the end of the year, take advantage of a $3,000 bonus to head home for the holidays!” the ad reads.

It even includes some fine print: “We’re checking names off our naughty list. Don’t be the next name we find.”

On social media, ICE also has posted a picture of a deportation flight, midair, being pulled by reindeer.

“Illegal aliens: Avoid ICE Air and go Ho Ho Home this Christmas,” ICE said.

The year-end push comes as the department is trying to bolster its final 2025 numbers, hoping to impress President Trump, who’d promised his voters “mass deportations.”

The concrete numbers have fallen short of the White House’s hopes of 1 million formal arrests and ousters.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will end 2025 with fewer than half a million formal removals. That would still be an all-time record, and if ICE is able to carry December’s pace of more than 1,350 a day into 2026, next year will be even higher.

ICE reported holding a record-shattering 68,442 migrants in detention as of Dec. 13. A year ago, under President Biden, that figure was about 39,000.

The numbers show just how much else has changed since the Biden era.

At this point in 2023 and 2024, roughly two-thirds of people booked into ICE custody were actually people arrested at the border.

Those already in the interior of the U.S. were largely ignored by Homeland Security, under orders from then-Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas saying that merely being in the country illegally was not a reason for deportation.

Under Mr. Trump, only a little more than 10% of those booked into ICE custody come from border arrests.

That’s both a reflection of the unfathomable drop in illegal border crossings under Mr. Trump, and his feverish push to oust the illegal immigrants who’d been off-limits under Mr. Mayorkas.

One result is that illegal immigrants without criminal records are increasingly being nabbed.

Of the migrants in ICE custody as of Dec. 13, just 58% had either criminal convictions or pending charges.

A year ago at this point that rate was about 94%.

In addition to the formal deportations, DHS says “tens of thousands” of migrants have also self-deported using the registration app, CBP Home, which pays out the bonus.

They are part of a broader count of 1.9 million people whom Ms. Noem says have self-deported. That tally has been questioned by those on all sides of the immigration issue, who say they cannot reproduce DHS’s calculations.