Celeste traveled to the US from Peru 20 years ago, and later continued her tourist visa as a young woman, 19 years old. She went back home to study graphic design, but was unable to work in her field without a paper, finding a painstaking job cleaning her hotel rooms and offices in Los Angeles. She built her life here, made friends and took courses at her local community college. She paid taxes every year, hoping to one day gain legal status.
But the years have passed without the dramatic reforms needed to reconstruct and thwart the legal pathway to US citizenship. And in the months since President Trump began his second term, her American dreams fell apart. She is unsettled by news images of undocumented immigrants being loaded onto planes, tied up like violent criminals, and returning to their home country. The idea of being torn from her home without the time to pack her belongings or say goodbye to her friends, swaying her to the heart.
That’s why Celeste made a tough decision. She continues to clean her office, saves only a few months of money, and returns to Peru by the end of the year.
Even though she plans to leave, she feels vulnerable and exposed. She is now avoiding restaurants, her favorite dance spots and even trail hikes. She has been worried about registering her name and address, so she has stopped signing up for online classes.
“The fear that they can grab you is always there,” Celeste said.
Trump has come to a second term that promises the biggest deportation effort in US history. During the campaign, he focused his rhetoric on undocumented immigrants who committed violent crimes. But shortly after he took office, his administration made it clear that they considered that everyone in the country would become criminals.
For the next few months, the new administration has used a variety of tactics (explicit and subtle) to encourage immigrants to leave their own consenting country.
On the day he took office, Trump disabled the CBP single mobile app that the Biden administration had been using since 2023, creating a more orderly process that would apply for asylum from the US-Mexico border. Thousands of migrants camped at the border suddenly cancelled their appointments in asylum.
Instead, the Trump administration launched CBP Home, an exchange app that allows immigrants to notify the government of their intention to leave the country. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to Times’ data requests regarding the number of people who used the app.
Last month, the agency launched an advertising campaign urging people across the country without allowing them to quit immediately. “If you don’t, we’ll find you and we’ll deport you,” agency Christy Noem says in the ad. This week, Trump told Fox Noticias he was developing a plan to illegally give country migrants scholarships and plane tickets that choose to “self-abolize.”
The administration is not just targeting undocumented immigrants. Over the past few weeks, Homeland Security has sent messages to migrants who have entered the country using one Biden-era CBP app, telling them that their temporary legal status has ended and they should leave “quickly.”
And then there is the image of an immigrant deported to the infamous El Salvador prison, tied up behind one side in prison outfits, his head bowed and shaved. The administration called for the alien enemy law of 1798 to eliminate Venezuelan citizens without justification, claiming that they were all gang members.
“One of the impacts of various Trump policy measures is to strike the fear and fear of immigrant communities,” said Kevin Johnson, a professor of public interest law at the UC Davis School of Law. “It’s designed to show immigrants, “We’re trying to get you.”
It is difficult to estimate the number of people who have made the tough decision to leave their lives or families here under a more generous enforcement policy, in order to return to their home country they have never seen in decades.
But even in liberal California, where undocumented immigrants enjoy access to social services than many parts of the United States, supporters say they are defending more questions from those who have been picked up, deported and considered leaving on their own terms.
Luz Gallegos, executive director of the Inland Empire’s TODEC Legal Center, said her staff is talking “everyday” with people considering leaving. Stripped by “constant attacks” on immigrants, she said, people are raising logistical questions: Can they take their cars? What will happen to their children’s education?
“A lot of things happening in the session is, ‘refiero irme con algo, que irme sin nada,'” Gallegos said. “I would rather leave with something than leaving nothing.”
Experts say that to significantly reduce the country’s unauthorized immigrant population, which is currently estimated at around 11 million, administration and Congress will need to make dramatic changes. Rounding up and packing millions of people across the country requires a massive deployment of resources and much more detention capacity. According to a report by TRAC, an extensive backlog of immigration court cases – more than 3.6 million cases were pending at the end of March, but such efforts have also been hampered.
“We can’t eliminate 11 million people from this country given the current level of resources and current strategy,” Johnson said. “They just need some people to leave.”
That is where the concept of encouraging self-denial comes into play. Mitt Romney proposed the idea in the 2012 Republican primary.
At the time, his embrace of the concept was widely seen as a reason for losing it among Latino voters in the general election. But more than a decade later, the strategy gained traction.
NumbersUSA, a grassroots organization focused on immigration reform, says on its website that encouraging people to return to their homeland is to reduce the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States.
Elena, an unauthorized Mexican immigrant who lived in the Inland Empire for nearly 20 years, said she and her husband were among those who took the oath. They will return to their homeland in the southern province of Chaepass by Christmas.
She was shopping recently when a store employee said she saw immigration agents nosing around the neighborhood. Don’t go out if you don’t have paperwork, the employee warned. A few months ago, she was traveling along Interstate 8 near the tropical border and passed an immigration checkpoint where she saw people being detained and handcuffed.
“My heart hurts so badly,” Elena said. Elena also asked her to be identified only in her name, as she fears she would attract the attention of immigration authorities. “I saw people traveling with workers and their families, people who brought life here. All of a sudden this happens and their dreams are destroyed.”
In recent years, couples’ ability to work has been limited by age and illness. Elena, 54, suffers from fibromyalgia and arthritis, and her husband, 62, has a heart attack. Still, he found work to secure cars and trucks. Together they cater to a birthday party and baby shower and serve a large buffet of meat, rice, beans and salsa. Chiapas has nearly five acres of land, and they want to build ranches, raise animals and grow crops.
“Many people say I’ll probably feel more free there,” she said from the kitchen in her tidy house, “Because here you feel chained up. You want to do a lot, but you can’t.”
She has three adult children – two born in the United States – and two grandchildren in California. She suffocates at the idea that she is thousands of miles away.
“I’m thinking about my grandchildren, and I’m crying, I’m suffering,” she said. “I love them so much. Who is going to take care of them like my grandmother?”
Maria, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, said that Maria, about 100 miles southeast, is planning to return to her home country in the Coachella Valley in 30 years and lead a new life in the west of Michoacan. Like the other women interviewed for this article, she asked to be identified only by name.
She lives in a numbing fear of being cornered and deported without the opportunity to ensure that her problems will be sorted out. She hesitates to go to church, has not visited the doctor in a few months and can’t safely run errands. Anxiety literally sent her packaging. Over the years, she has supported herself by selling enchiladas and tacos from her small food stands. She plans to bring cookware home to Mexico in the hopes of making a living there.
She leaves behind three daughters and six grandchildren, but is reunited with two sons in Mexico.
“It’s as if I’m divided into two parts,” she said. “I wasn’t happy here, and I’m not happy there.”
This article is part of the Times Equity Report initiative funded by the James Irvine Foundation, which examines the challenges faced by low-income workers and efforts to address economic disparities in California.
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