Uncommon Knowledge: The body count to test Trump’s deportation boom

In a cheery, candy-cane font over DHS letterhead, “Home for the Holidays” promised a free plane ticket and spending money to anyone in the U.S. illegally willing to click, pack, and go. The video—styled like an infomercial—rolled out on Cyber Monday in December. Advocates called it inhumane, but the government said tens of thousands had already used its CBP Home app to leave and “be reunited” abroad by Christmas. The ad’s opening line—”Are you an illegal alien…looking for the perfect holiday gift?”—didn’t soften the blow.

What followed was no longer just marketing. Yesterday, DHS tripled its “exit bonus” for migrants who self-deport by year’s end to $3,000, pairing it with a one-way ticket home. The arithmetic is simple: a forced arrest-detain-remove averages $17,121 per person, so voluntary departures are cheaper. The department says there have been roughly 622,000 removals in 2025. But this month also brought a stark counter-statistic: four deaths in ICE custody in four days, pushing 2025 to at least 30 in-custody deaths, the highest since 2004.

From the administration, the message is about speed and deterrence. “Any illegal alien who uses the CBP Home App to self-deport will also receive a stipend of $1,000…[and] even with the cost of the stipend…it is projected that the use of CBP Home will decrease the costs of a deportation by around 70 percent,” DHS said when it launched the program—now lifted to $3,000 through year-end. Conservative voices such as National Review called the idea “worth trying,” but warned that payouts alone won’t deliver self-deportation.

The administration has denied a spike in ICE custody deaths. “Yet again, the media is trying to twist data to smear ICE law enforcement. There has been NO spikes in deaths,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the agency.

“Consistent with data over the last decade, death rates in custody are 0.00007 percent. As bed space has expanded, we have maintained higher standard of care than most prisons that hold U.S. citizens—including providing access to proper medical care,” she added.

From the left, lawyers and advocates call the pitch misleading. “The government’s offer to pay a stipend, waive fees, and let people return legally to the U.S. go against current law and court practices,” wrote The Marshall Project, after canvassing immigration attorneys. ProPublica reported migrants who tried to use the app got stuck or lost trust in the process. And as December’s cluster of deaths hit, civil rights groups said detention had outpaced care and oversight.

The sharpest way to understand 2025 is a simple comparison of risks. In custody, 30 people died this year—the worst since 2004. On the journey, the toll is much larger. The U.N. migration agency documented 686 deaths and disappearances on the U.S.–Mexico border in 2022, calling it the deadliest land migration route in the world, with the true number likely higher due to missing coroner and rescue data. Globally, 2024 was the deadliest year on record for migrants—8,938 deaths—including 1,233 in the Americas and 174 in the Darién Gap, through which many U.S.-bound migrants travel. Far more migrants die outside detention than inside it, even in a record enforcement year. That is why deterrence and rapid removals claim to save lives.

However, that does not absolve the administration of responsibility. ICE’s own notices and local reports identify four men—Jean Wilson Brutus (Haiti) in Newark, Delvin Francisco Rodriguez (Nicaragua) in Natchez, Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir (Eritrea) at Moshannon Valley, and Nenko Stanev Gantchev (Bulgaria) at North Lake—who died between December 12–15, two after medical emergencies and two with natural causes suspected. These cases landed as ICE detention set a record of 66,000 in late November.

If the lens is widened beyond the U.S., the detention-death picture is sobering but instructive. Britain, with vastly fewer detainees at any one time, has recorded 13 deaths in immigration removal centers since 2017, according to the watchdog INQUEST. Canada detains far smaller numbers overall, but rights groups argue its opacity and reliance on provincial jails have produced deaths that loom large on a per-capita basis—proof that no system is immune. It isn’t that the U.S. is uniquely bad or uniquely good; it’s that detention can be dangerous everywhere.

The case for deterrence—done competently—rests on composition. If credible removal risk reduces attempts, and if faster returns shorten time in smugglers’ hands, border-route deaths should fall faster than detention deaths rise. That is testable in 2026: county coroners in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona should recover fewer bodies, and CBP’s mortality tallies should drop, even as flights continue. That’s a test, purely on humanitarian grounds, for immigration policy next year.

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