type: timeline_event
An internal DHS document obtained by CNN on March 18, 2026, revealed that the administration's signature "Project Homecoming" self-deportation program had produced results dramatically below the numbers publicly touted by the White House. According to the document, only 72,000 individuals had signed up for the voluntary departure program since its launch, and of those, just 38,380 had actually left the country. The program had cost approximately $1 billion, translating to roughly $26,000 per departure.
The figures directly contradicted the administration's repeated claim that 2.2 million people had "self-deported" since President Trump took office — a number that administration officials had cited in press conferences, social media posts, and congressional testimony. The leaked document revealed that the vast majority of those counted in the 2.2 million figure were people who had been denied entry at the border, individuals whose visas expired and were not renewed, and people already in ICE detention who accepted voluntary departure orders rather than fighting removal proceedings.
Immigration researchers noted that most of those who actually enrolled in Project Homecoming were already in ICE custody and chose the program as an alternative to prolonged detention, not as a genuine voluntary decision to leave the country. The program offered a $2,000 travel stipend and a one-year bar on reentry rather than the standard five- or ten-year bars that come with formal deportation orders, creating an incentive structure that immigration attorneys described as "coercion dressed up as choice."
The disclosure added to a growing pattern of the administration inflating immigration enforcement statistics to justify its spending priorities. Just days earlier, an AP investigation had found that DHS had provided three different deportation numbers in three days. Congressional Democrats called for a GAO audit of the program's costs and outcomes, while Republican appropriators privately expressed frustration that the program had consumed significant resources with limited results.