In late September, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) jubilantly announced that “2 million illegal aliens have been removed or have self-deported since January 20” of this year.
While the estimate that about 400,000 immigrants have been deported is likely accurate, the assertion that 1.6 million immigrants have already self-deported is a self-serving fantasy.
The DHS figure—roughly equivalent to 15% of the entire population of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S.—would amount to about 200,000 people having voluntarily left the country per month, an exodus not likely to have gone unobserved.
If anything, rather than leaving, many immigrants are finding ways to move deeper into the shadows, determined to stay.
What we do know, according to a recent national survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the New York Times is that 15% of all immigrants have considered leaving, but not that they have “gone home.”
So where is the administration getting its numbers from? Reporting suggests DHS pulled the data from a chart produced by the anti-immigrant think-tank, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which contends its analyses are derived from American Community Survey and Current Population Survey (CPS) data.
That might sound academic and reliable, but experts including the former chief economist for the Congressional Budget Office, Wendy Edelberg, and the Peterson Institute for International Economics have explained at length why they are unreliable. Even the CIS analysts themselves—along with Pew Research Center experts—include prominent caveats to explain that the apparent evidence of out-migration might be a statistical artifact.
There are three main reasons why use of CPS data does not provide a sound basis for an estimate of out-migration:
- The CPS sample is relatively small and, even if perfectly representative of the U.S. population (which it is not), would include a very small number of the households threatened by current ICE/CBP enforcement.
- Large numbers of immigrants targeted by ICE/CBP are now hunkering down in fear and are unlikely to provide any information about themselves to strangers, especially government interviewers.
- Given prominently reported and nationally litigated efforts by DHS to use administrative records—SSA, IRS, Medicaid, and SNAP—to target immigrants, any assurances by Census Bureau interviewers about the confidentiality of personal information are almost certainly not believed.
What we do know is that there is credible evidence that ICE detention is generating massive waves of fear and a “hunkering down” response across immigrant communities, leading to a measurable drop-off in CPS response. The administration has misleadingly interpreted that decline as reflecting a massive out-migration.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation/NY Times survey, close to half (41%) of all immigrants, including the three-quarters who are naturalized or legal permanent residents, are worried they or a family member could be detained or deported.
Fear of random detention and workplace raids is driving many—including Latino U.S. citizens—to retreat from civic life. 14% of those surveyed said that they or a family member had avoided going to church or on family outings in 2025 because of concerns about drawing attention to someone’s immigration status. A similar number, 10%, said they or a family member had avoided taking a child to school or a school event due to those concerns and 5% reported they had, themselves, avoided going to work.
The survey (which included naturalized citizens and legal permanent residents) also confirmed that, despite assurances of confidentiality, they fear personal information provided to popular programs might be misused by DHS in order to deport them. Since January, 12% of those surveyed had avoided applying for Medicaid, SNAP, or publicly available housing support, and 11% who were already enrolled in such a program had stopped participating.
What the CPS data that DHS draws on as evidence of its’ success in leveraging self-deportation shows is not surprising; immigrants worried about how their personal information might be misused are not willing to answer government surveys. What they are doing to confront the persecution they face is to make themselves as invisible and hard to find as possible. They are not self-deporting en masse.
That fact is borne out by DHS’s own admittedly limited data, which show that somewhere between 25,000 and 80,000 immigrants have taken advantage of DHS’ CBP Home incentives, a program that offers to cover airfare and a $1,000 payment to those who leave voluntarily.
The CBP’s ADIS system, which tracks foreign visitors arriving and departing by air or sea, was most recently (2024) reported to have identified about 55,000 visitors or students who had overstayed their visa. Still more may have left in 2025—perhaps 70,000.
At the high end, the total amounts to about 205,000 individuals, well short of the 1.6 million touted by DHS.
Which begs the question, do the numbers DHS put out matter? There’s a powerful argument they don’t, or at least only so much as they help to energize the MAGA base. Accuracy is beside the point. What really matters is the day-to-day reality in the lives of millions of families confronting powerful and increasingly out-of-control efforts to get rid of them.
What happens over the coming years is uncertain. Polling shows most Americans believe the administration’s anti-immigrant crackdown has gone too far. Local resistance to ICE is growing, even as a multitude of court cases about whether DHS’s “shock and awe” campaign can continue are pending.
What is clear, and what the numbers show, is that in immigrant communities across the U.S., families are making the decision to stay, demonstrating their fortitude in navigating an increasingly hostile environment. “Aqui Estamos, No Nos Vamos,” so the immigrant justice slogan goes. “We are here/we are not leaving.”
Ed Kissam has researched census data issues for more than three decades and published extensively on differential undercounts of farmworkers and Latinos. He has led research on farmworker and immigrant issues sponsored by the Department of Labor, the Commission on Agricultural Workers, and the National Institute for Food and Agriculture. He worked as a farmworker outreach expert on several COVID-19 initiatives during the pandemic and published extensively on steps to improve strategy.
