Immigrants are giving up their claims for humanitarian protection and opting to depart the United States in exponentially higher numbers under the Trump administration, mostly from the austere confines of federal detention centers where they increasingly face prolonged stays.
Immigration judges issued more than 80,000 “voluntary departure” orders from January 2025 through March of this year, according to court data obtained by the Vera Institute of Justice and shared with The Washington Post. Such orders are granted to immigrants who request to leave on their own terms while giving up the opportunity to seek a new life in the U.S. They are not given a formal deportation order, which could make it easier for them to return legally in the future.
The number of people abandoning their immigration cases is at least seven times as high as the number seen in the last 15 months of the Biden administration, when 11,400 took that option. More than 70 percent of those granted a voluntary departure order during President Donald Trump’s second administration were being held in immigration detention when they made the request, a far higher share than those who departed willingly while Joe Biden was in the White House.
The shift is one of the most striking data points to emerge from Trump’s mass deportation campaign and appears to be part of his broader effort to purge millions of immigrants from the U.S. Officials have promoted the option on social media and in posters plastered in detention centers and courts. Immigration attorneys say the spike reflects the mounting strain on people who are facing long stints in detention as they await a hearing in immigration court, where it has become increasingly difficult to win asylum.
“These changes come at the same time as the number of people who are detained and facing deportation is increasing and relatively fewer people are being released from detention,” Vera researchers Jacquelyn Pavilon and Neil Agarwal concluded in a report for the nonprofit organization, which is focused on improving the criminal justice and immigration systems. “Altogether, Vera’s analysis illuminates how voluntary departure is being used in the second Trump administration to require more people to leave the United States.”
Voluntary departure has long existed under federal law for those who are facing removal from the country and it’s an option for those who are unlikely to win in immigration court. To qualify, immigrants cannot have a serious criminal record and must demonstrate good moral character. They must depart within a specific time frame established by a judge and are typically required to leave at their own expense.
The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment on the increase in voluntary departures and repeated its unsubstantiated claim that millions have “self-deported” since Inauguration Day “because illegal aliens know President Trump is enforcing our immigration laws.”
The agency defended its efforts to detain immigrants for the duration of their court proceedings, saying officials are seeking to deport those who arrived illegally under Biden.
“Biden and [then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas] recklessly unleashed millions of unvetted illegal aliens into American communities — and they abused many loopholes to do so,” DHS said in a statement. “President Trump and Secretary [Markwayne] Mullin are now enforcing this law as it was actually written to keep America safe.”
The immigration courts, which fall under the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
During the last half of the Biden administration, judges issued an average of 750 voluntary departure orders a month. Those numbers began rising steadily after Trump returned to the White House and dispatched armed, masked immigration officers into cities to arrest undocumented immigrants who had been off-limits under the Biden administration because they were not serious criminals.
In July, a month after the Los Angeles raids, the number of immigrants being granted a voluntary departure order spiked to 6,370. That same month, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Todd M. Lyons, issued a memo declaring that immigrants who arrived in the U.S. illegally would no longer be eligible for a bond hearing as they fight deportation proceedings in court. That has meant many immigrants are being kept in custody for the duration of their removal proceedings, though some have successfully challenged their detentions in U.S. district courts.
The number of people granted voluntary departure has especially skyrocketed this year. More than 9,000 people received permission from a judge to leave in March. Attorneys say many are choosing to leave because they are frightened by the possibility of being stuck in detention indefinitely.
“People are taking it because they’re trying to get out of detention more quickly, because they don’t see any possible avenues for relief for themselves,” said Shayna Kessler, director of the Advancing Universal Representation initiative at the Vera Institute of Justice. “It really appears as though it’s a component of this mass deportation agenda where people are being encouraged to depart even when they have potentially a lawful right to stay.”
Ariel Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, said it is likely that one of the factors driving the rise is detainees’ inability to seek release on bond in immigration courts.
“It’s pretty clear that the trend has increased, that more people in detention are seeking voluntary departure as an alternative to staying in detention,” he said.
One man, a 33-year-old from the Middle East, was detained by ICE in December after a scheduled check-in with an immigration officer. His brother said he began suffering panic attacks, chest pains and banged his head on the door repeatedly during a stint in solitary confinement. He has no criminal record.
The man had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in 2024, was taken into custody and eventually released pending a hearing. His relatives asked that his name and theirs be withheld because the man fears for his safety in ICE detention and in his native country.
His brother said the man is a Christian traumatized by persecution in his mostly Muslim native country, having been beaten, threatened and had his car set on fire. While in ICE detention, an officer raised the possibility of deporting him to Uganda, his brother said, and soon after, he decided to leave voluntarily.
“He told me: ‘Look, I am dying here anyway. I’d rather die in my country instead of going to a place where I’m going to die,’” his brother said in an interview. “‘I cannot live without freedom.’”
Other immigrants said they gave up because they feared they wouldn’t get a fair hearing.
After taking office, Trump officials fired more than 100 immigration judges without explanation and hired new ones with little experience who were working under the threat of dismissal. Denials of asylum and other humanitarian protections have soared. The number of immigrants detained on a daily basis more than doubled to 70,000 at its peak in January, and fell to around 60,000 in April, accordingto the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a research organization that publishes immigration data.
Vera found that the newest and least experienced appointees are disproportionately being assigned to hear the cases of immigrants held in detention, where it can be challenging to find a lawyer or prepare a defense. The new judges are also granting voluntary departure at higher rates than more experienced ones, the Vera report found.
In the six-month span from September to February, the states with the highest number of people agreeing to voluntary departure in immigration courts were Texas (12,400) and Louisiana (5,400), according to the report. Florida, Georgia and California each posted more than 3,000 cases, while New York registered 1,500.
Roman Husar, 37, a Ukrainian artist who arrived in the U.S. in 2023 with his wife, their son and a cat named Fiona, said he sought voluntary departure in April from the Eden Detention Center in Texas after watching hundreds of detainees head to immigration court only to return with a deportation order. Months passed, and the feeling of hopelessness spread.
“Nobody gets asylum here in Texas. Nobody,” he said in an interview. “People, they are denied, denied, denied.”
His fortunes had shifted dramatically under Trump. His family had arrived via a special Biden administration program for Ukrainians with U.S. sponsors fleeing the Russian invasion. The family settled in the state of Georgia and soon Husar was working three jobs, making cabinets, delivering food and printing T-shirts.
“The government of the United States was telling me, ‘Come to your country, we will give you safety,’” Husar said.
Trump suspended the sponsorship program for Ukrainians shortly after taking office. Husar said officials never processed his applications to renew his permission to remain in the U.S. or for temporary protected status. Still, he said, he hoped to stay. He had settled into life in Georgia, paying taxes and cheering for the Atlanta Hawks. Last summer, he attended Burning Man in Nevada, where he organized an art display at the event that he hoped would renew attention on the conflict in Ukraine.
Then police in Texas pulled him over in September. He was driving home to Georgia from Burning Man and officers arrested him for possessing a recreational amount of marijuana, which was legal in Nevada but not in the Lone Star State.
Officers transferred him to ICE detention and attempted to deport him directly to the war zone he had fled. He presented a judge with letters of support from relatives who are U.S. citizens and his church pastors, but he was denied a bond hearing.
“I was expecting real justice,” Husar said in an interview. “I was really surprised.”
Homeland Security officials said in an email that Husar “broke the law” while his applications to stay in the U.S. were being processed and was placed in deportation proceedings. The officials did not explain why they tried to deport him to a nation at war.
The misdemeanor marijuana charges were dismissed, according to court records and his lawyer.
He had intended to seek asylum on religious grounds, noting that he is a Christian, who was in a religious musical band, and a conscientious objector. If he were deported, he said, Ukrainian authorities could imprison him for refusing to fight. Or he could die in the war.
“I’ll be killed,” he said.
As his final hearing date approached, he was assigned one of the Trump administration’s newly appointed immigration judges, Jared Kennedy, a former prosecutor in Texas who had no stated immigration experience in the press release announcing his hiring.
Jennifer Peyton, Husar’s attorney and one of the immigration judges Trump officials had fired without explanation, told Husar he had a strong case, but he was unlikely to win and could face deportation to Ukraine.
Husar withdrew his asylum application and asked the judge for permission to go to Turkey or Poland — not Ukraine. Kennedy agreed.
Peyton said leaving voluntarily gave Husar the option of trying to return to the U.S. “when things are different in his country, and in our country, perhaps.”
But she said it wasn’t voluntary.
“This type of voluntary departure is not voluntary,” she said. “It’s coerced.”
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