The Morning: The self-deporters

Plus, tariffs, an interview with the pope's doctor and new details about F. Scott Fitzgerald's life

View in browser|nytimes.com March 28, 2025 Good morning. Today you'll hear from Miriam Jordan, an immigration correspondent who has picked up on a surprising trend. We're also covering tariffs, an interview with the pope's doctor and new details about F. Scott Fitzgerald's life. Jesús, 25, arrived last year from Venezuela. Jimena Peck for The New York Times The self-deporters By Miriam Jordan I cover immigration. It is incredibly hard to deport 14 million people — the estimated number of immigrants in the United States unlawfully. First, the government has to find them. For many, it has to pry them from their lives, their jobs, their communities. That's why the Trump administration has deported only a few thousand migrants so far, focusing mostly on those it says are criminals. To make a real change, as Trump has promised to do, millions of people would need to leave voluntarily. So the administration is urging them — in some cases, trying to scare them enough — to "self-deport." The Homeland Security secretary tells them in TV ads to "leave now" or be hunted down. Those who comply "may have an opportunity to return and enjoy our freedom and live the American dream." (This is unlikely, because anyone who has been in the country illegally for a year is ineligible to return for a decade.) Self-deportation, a longtime fantasy for immigration hawks, was popularized by Mitt Romney in a 2012 presidential debate and often mocked. But for the first time in my 15 years of reporting on this topic, immigrants tell me they're considering it. Some have already followed through. If the climate here becomes intolerable — if the risks of being caught and severed from their families seem too high — it's possible many more migrants will abandon the United States. Today's newsletter is about what I've heard in my reporting. Who wants to go Migrants in Denver, Colo., in 2023. Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post, via Getty Images In recent years, Denver has absorbed 40,000 migrants — the most per capita of any city. Most of the newcomers are Venezuelans who fled their broken country. But the city is also home to many Latino immigrants who came long ago. I visited last week to take their temperature. Most are not inclined to bolt. Two-thirds of undocumented immigrants have been in the country for a decade or longer. Most pay taxes. They're people like Mirna, a Mexican who crossed the border 28 years ago. Her husband owns a house-painting business. They bought a mobile home and have three American children, including a daughter serving in the Navy. Mirna, who speaks English fluently, told me she wouldn't go back to Mexico because it would mean leaving her kids. But recent border crossers are much more likely to consider departing. I interviewed several young men from Venezuela who are among them. They see footage of shackled migrants shuffled onto deportation planes. They watch the videos of more than 200 Venezuelan men, accused by the Trump administration of gang affiliation, being flown to a mega-prison in El Salvador. Reporting suggests that some of them may not have been gang members. Rather than risk subjecting themselves to that ordeal, they want to leave on their own terms. Since arriving in Denver in 2023, Cristian, 29, has delivered meals and worked on construction sites. (Like other migrants I interviewed, he worried that immigration agents would find him and spoke on the condition that I identify him only by his given name.) He sends money to his wife and children in Venezuela. Cristian does not have any tattoos, a customary gang indicator, he said. He possesses a work permit and an active asylum application, which theoretically protects him from imminent deportation. But the enforcement climate since Trump took office has changed Cristian's calculus "360 degrees," he told me. With the help of an American friend who escorted him to several immigration offices, he made an appointment to appear before a judge today so he could request a voluntary departure from the United States. (Immigrants who receive formal permission to leave have an easier time returning later.) Other Venezuelans contemplating an exit were released into the United States by border officials with orders to report to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement every few months. Recently, officials have detained and deported people when they've shown up for their check-ins. ICE agents and the local authorities detain a person in Denver. Chet Strange for The New York Times Jesús, 25, has his next ICE appointment in early May and sees the writing on the wall. After arriving last year, he languished for months in detention until officials turned him loose, probably to make room for others. He found work remodeling homes in Denver. Now he'd rather return voluntarily to Venezuela than be confined again. "I came here to work to help my family," said Jesús, the sole brother to five sisters. "I just hope to manage to leave before they deport me." He has enough money to buy an airline ticket. But, like others, he told me that the U.S. authorities had confiscated his passport. How can he board a plane without it? American women in Denver formed groups in late 2023 to help recent arrivals from Venezuela. But more recently they also share tips about how to leave because the bureaucracy can be hard to navigate. A mother with a U.S.-born child needs to get a passport for her child, for instance. But his father, who needs to sign forms, has been deported. The local volunteers have researched what happens if migrants leave without an ID — and whether it's safer to depart by air or over land. The departures are not exclusive to Denver. A family in Chicago recently left for Mexico, according to their lawyer. People have abandoned Springfield, Ohio — the town where Trump claimed Haitians were eating their pets — employers there told me. Others are contemplating leaving from elsewhere, like Houston. The right moment For now, most migrants are staying put. They've trekked through jungles and cartel territory to get here. Instead of giving up, they limit their outings and keep a low profile. What could change their minds? The job market, several told me. A crackdown on U.S. businesses that employed undocumented workers would drive many into the shadows and others back home. A recession would have the same effect. Wayne Cornelius, an immigration scholar at the University of California, San Diego, has found that bleak job prospects are most likely to impel undocumented immigrants to leave. Take Karla and Ender, a Venezuelan couple with four children. They worry about immigration enforcement. But they have plenty of work, and their family is thriving in Colorado. Since arriving in late 2023, they have relocated from a rundown apartment complex, acquired two cars and bought their kids cellphones. "You can barely make enough money to feed your family in Venezuela," Karla said. "We live much better here." Ender added, "We'll leave once we have accomplished our goals, maybe in two years." More on immigration Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. had revoked the visa of a Tufts University graduate student because of her support of Palestinians. Rubio said the State Department is revoking visas daily, and he estimated that more than 300 people's visa might have been revoked already. Teams of masked agents in masks have approached foreign students, zip-tied them and bundled them into unmarked vehicles. These tactics are usually reserved for criminal suspects. THE LATEST NEWS Trump Administration A federal judge ordered several Trump administration officials to preserve the messages from the Signal group chat planning attacks in Yemen. Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested there probably would not be a criminal investigation into the Yemen chat. The Health and Human Services Department plans to lay off 10,000 employees. The cuts will be especially deep at the F.D.A. and the C.D.C. Trump asked Elise Stefanik to stay in Congress rather than serve as U.N. ambassador, amid concern about the slim voting margin that Republicans hold in the House. The Trump administration challenged a California law that says schools can't be required to tell parents when students ask to use different pronouns. Auto Tariffs An all-electric Porsche in Leipzig, Germany. Jens Schlueter/Getty Images Shares in automakers around the world, including many in Germany, Japan and Korea, fell after Trump announced tariffs on imported cars and car parts. Shares in Tesla — which makes all the cars that it sells domestically in the U.S. — rose almost 3 percent. Trump's tariffs are likely to encourage more domestic car production in the long run, economists say. But in the short term, they will probably hurt the economy. Experts say the tariffs will raise the average price of a car by thousands of dollars. Higher Education The University of Michigan will eliminate its central D.E.I. program, one of the largest at a major public school. (The Times published an investigation into the program last year.) When protests roiled Columbia, the school closed its campus to the public. New Yorkers say they lost a treasured public space. International Dr. Sergio Alfieri Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters In an interview, the leader of Pope Francis's medical team said the pope came close to death in the hospital and said it was a "miracle." A strong earthquake struck central Myanmar, killing at least 13 people. Follow our latest updates here. The BBC said Turkey had deported a correspondent who was covering the antigovernment protests in Istanbul. Read what the protests mean for Turkey. South Sudan's defense minister put the country's vice president under house arrest, his party said. The U.N. has warned that the detention is pushing the country back into civil war. King Charles was briefly hospitalized from the side effects of his cancer treatment. Other Big Stories Archaeologists have unearthed the tomb of an unknown pharaoh in Egypt. Researchers say it probably belonged to a line of kings that, until recently, had been lost to history. Companies that once helped fund Pride Month celebrations are cutting their support. Organizers blame Trump's crusade against D.E.I. The amount of sea ice on the planet reached the lowest level ever recorded in March. Opinions Hillary Clinton writes that the most distressing part of the Trump administration's group chat blunder isn't the hypocrisy; it's the stupidity. No one in Turkey is safe from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's erosion of democracy. To save the country, citizens should refuse to be silent, Ekrem Imamoglu, the imprisoned mayor of Istanbul, writes. To differentiate the plural "they" from the gender-neutral pronoun "they," let's capitalize the latter, John McWhorter writes. Here are columns by David Brooks on passions and Lydia Polgreen on migration in Sweden. A subscription to match the variety of your interests. News. Games. Recipes. Product reviews. Sports reporting. A New York Times All Access subscription covers all of it and more. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Budapest Akos Stiller for The New York Times Travel: Spend 36 hours in Budapest. A visit from God: People in Japan have chronicled what they considered a sign from God on a lake for nearly 600 years. It has disappeared. Fashion weeks: See good hair from outside the shows. Fly safer: Airlines allow you to carry a toddler in your lap. Experts say that's not a good idea. Most clicked yesterday: How to stay mentally sharp in retirement. Lives Lived: Herb Greene was in the right place at the right time to document a seismic change in music: San Francisco in the 1960s. His portraits of the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin and others provided a visual record of the city's thriving rock scene. He has died at 82. SPORTS Men's N.C.A.A. Tournament: Texas Tech narrowly beat Arkansas in overtime of a thrilling game. Duke, Florida and Alabama also advanced to the Elite Eight. M.L.B. Opening Day: Orioles outfielder Tyler O'Neill hit a home run on Opening Day for the sixth straight year. N.B.A.: Commissioner Adam Silver pitched the league's 30 owners an idea for an N.B.A.-owned league in Europe, which could start as early as next year. ARTS AND IDEAS F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda in 1921. Minnesota Historical Society/Corbis, via Getty Images One ill-fated night in December 1924, F. Scott Fitzgerald got into a drunken brawl in Rome that ended in a police station. He described it as "the rottenest thing that ever happened in my life," an event so traumatic that his biographers say he could not bear to discuss it. He did write about it, though, fictionalizing the event twice, including in his 1934 novel "Tender is the Night." Scholars took these accounts of the scuffle as an accurate record. But newly uncovered documents suggest Fitzgerald may have behaved even worse than his stories depicted. More on culture The Sundance Film Festival is moving to Boulder, Colo. The event has outgrown Park City, Utah, its home for the past 40 years. The Atlantic picked the best poetry of the century so far. The University of Maryland will welcome Kermit the Frog as its commencement speaker in May. Is Melania Trump's 2005 Dior couture wedding gown really available for resale? Or is this a hoax? Late night hosts are still joking about the Signal group chat. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Linda Xiao for The New York Times Make this viral, crunchy Dubai Chocolate bar at home. Lower your grocery bill. Take our news quiz. GAMES Here is today's Spelling Bee. Yesterday's pangrams were coupled, decouple and decoupled. And here are today's Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Correction: Yesterday's newsletter misstated the timing of the government group chat about strikes on Yemen. It happened earlier this month, not this week. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: Adam B. 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