100,000 illegal immigants have taken DHS’ self-deportation bonus

Homeland Security has paid out roughly 100,000 bonuses to illegal immigrants who have registered to self-deport through the government’s special app.

Most of those were $1,000 payments, though the department saw a surge of takers when it offered a bonus $3,000 holiday payment last month, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told The Washington Times’ “The Sit Down with Alex Swoyer” podcast.

That means more than $100 million has been paid out in bonuses to compel illegal immigrants to leave the U.S. Homeland Security is also paying for plane tickets for those who register.

Ms. McLaughlin said the total is still significantly less than the $17,000 it costs to arrest, detain and fly out the average illegal immigrant.

“It’s like a 70% savings, at least,” she said. “The more deportations we see, the more self-deportations. It’s kind of a virtuous cycle, as far as those in the country illegally are getting the message.”

Ms. McLaughlin also addressed some of the personal vitriol and even threats aimed at her from Democratic politicians and Trump opponents, particularly those on social media.

“We wear it as a badge of honor,” she said. “They are going after us because we are giving the facts and the truth to the American people, and we are doing so in a way that is swift but also effective. She rejected accusations that she had misled or lied to the public, which were made by Democratic lawmakers.

She declared the Trump administration “the most transparent … in American history,” and said that’s “a threat” to Democrats’ narrative.

In the interview, Ms. McLaughlin took aim at sanctuary jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate with the department’s deportation efforts.

She said Los Angeles is probably the worst sanctuary in the country and that Chicago might have taken the crown earlier, but “their police have started working with us.”

President Trump earlier this month said he would stop federal money from going to sanctuary municipalities and to states that host them. That move is supposed to take effect Feb. 1.

Past efforts to deny sanctuaries money, dating back to the first Trump administration, were blocked by the courts. Ms. McLaughlin said Mr. Trump is committed to the attempt.

“The president is looking at this on even broader terms,” she said.

There is no official definition of what makes a “sanctuary.” Jurisdictions vary greatly in their strictness, though the common thread is that they restrict cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in picking up illegal immigrant deportation targets from their prisons and jails.

Some jurisdictions will still alert ICE to impending releases, but refuse to allow ICE into their facilities or to hold migrants beyond their regular release time. Others won’t notify ICE, and the strictest sanctuaries hinder federal officers operating on their own, such as by trying to block them from making arrests even in courthouses or other public spaces.

Sanctuaries say they will cooperate with criminal warrants but are dismissive of civil warrants used in immigration cases.

Ms. McLaughlin said one acting U.S. attorney, Bill Essayli in Los Angeles, is attempting to bring criminal charges in many of the cases.

“We are certainly looking to use that as a blueprint across the country,” she told The Times.

Ms. McLaughlin spoke to The Times last week, just after a second ICE-involved shooting in Minneapolis this month. That involved three illegal immigrants who DHS said ganged up on an officer, beating him with a snow shovel and broom handle until he fired, wounding one of them in the leg.

The earlier shooting involved Renee Good, who was slain during a confrontation with an ICE officer on a Minneapolis street. Video of that encounter has deeply divided the country, with Mr. Trump’s supporters saying Ms. Good’s refusal to comply with commands to get out of her vehicle, which then lurched toward and hit an ICE officer, justified the shooting.

The president’s opponents say the video suggests Ms. Good was trying to drive away, and the officer could have gotten out of the way without firing.

Ms. McLaughlin said the shooting was justified and the officer followed his training.

Asked to square the different views of the shooting, Ms. McLaughlin said, “There’s a bit of ICE hysteria going on.”

“I think it’s also a degree of Trump derangement syndrome,” she said.

Ms. McLaughlin said the protests that have erupted in Minneapolis are being spurred by organizations.

“It does look like there’s a degree of foreign interference here, as well as domestic,” she said, though she didn’t elaborate on that point.

She did say that some protesters are recycling from location to location.

“We are seeing a lot of the same individuals who are now in Minneapolis were previously in Portland, previously [in] Los Angeles, New York. They are certainly busing people in, there is funding,” she said, suggesting there’s a well-organized effort that’s being probed by the administration.

Ms. McLaughlin said there have been “upwards of 600,000” deportations since the president took office and they are currently deporting people at a rate of about 2,500 a day.

That was higher than the official figures released by ICE indicate.

The latest data show that ICE formally removed 118,164 people, or about 1,200 daily, from Oct. 1 through Jan. 7.