Some immigrants are already leaving the US in ‘self-deportations’ as Trump’s threats loom

TRACY, California — Michel Bérrios left the United States a few days before the new year and gave that to the newly elected President Donald Trump campaign for mass deportations a small victory before they even started.

Bérrios, a former leader of a Nicaraguan student uprising, had been in the U.S. legally while remaining under President Joe Biden for nearly a year. unprecedented use of humanitarian parole for citizens of certain vulnerable countries. But harsh statements during the American election campaign filled her with anxious memories of hiding from the authorities in her home country.

Advocates and immigration experts who have noted such departures say Bérrios’ decision to leave the U.S. despite her legal status shows how uncertainty and threats have led a growing number of people to leave the U.S. before Trump takes office on Monday.

There are no records of this departure, but history has seen other eras of public backlash that expelled migrants – with or without legal status.

Trump and his allies are banking on this “self-deportation,” the idea that life can be made unbearable enough to make people leave.

“Because (the U.S.) is not a Third World country like where many of us come from, I thought there would be a different culture here, and it was a rude awakening to realize that you and your family are not welcome,” Bérrios says. , 31, said days before her departure.

Self-deportation helps Trump achieve his goals without the government having to spend or do anything in such cases. Trump has long said he wanted to deport millions of migrants, but never more than 350,000 people are deported every year in his first term. Only 41,500 detention beds will be funded this year, so carrying out mass deportations poses significant logistical hurdles.

“If you want to deport yourself, you should deport yourself, because again, we know who you are, and we will come find you,” Trump’s new border czar, Tom Homan, has said.

Bérrios lived legally with her cousin in California, east of San Francisco, and worked at the front desk of a car repair shop with Trump supporters, but she knew it was temporary — especially when Trump was elected. Her colleagues’ anti-immigrant comments increased and her discomfort grew.

In Nicaragua: “I went into hiding for five years. I had to change my routine. I had to completely change my life. I stopped visiting my parents, my friends,” Bérrios said of President Daniel Ortega’s crackdown on dissent. Now that Trump is returning to power, “that uncertainty has returned.”

Such fear is common for anyone without permanent legal status, said Melanie Nezer, vice president for advocacy and external relations at the Women’s Refugee Commission. People with temporary permission to live and work, like Bérrios, could see that status end soon.

“Many, many people are in this situation,” she said. About 1 million people have temporary protected status and another 500,000 people, like Bérrios, have been granted humanitarian parole. asylum seekers from four countries: Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Trump has said he wants to end both.

Until 2018, Bérrios led a fairly normal life in Nicaragua, where he worked in a call center in Managua. She studied marketing and hoped to pursue a master’s degree in dance.

Then, changes to Nicaragua’s social security system prompted retirees to protest. When they were brutalized by the police and Ortega supporters, students came to their aid.

Deadly clashes followedand college campuses became strongholds of resistance in what would become a referendum on the government itself. The government declared the demonstrators ‘terrorists’ and claimed that they were organized by foreign powers, especially the United States.

Bérrios became a protest leader on the campus of the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua in Managua. Back when she was known only by a code name, she told The Associated Press from hiding in July 2018: “Now I really have no future.”

Hundreds of other protesters were imprisoned and many were tortured and more recently deported and stripped of citizenship.

“There was always the uncertainty that they could come after me, that they could take me to prison,” Bérrios told Nicaraguan authorities last year. “So I decided: maybe the United States can help me make a change for my peace of mind.”

A cousin, a U.S. citizen from California, offered to sponsor Bérrios last year. Under Biden’s strategy to create legal pathways while severely limiting asylum to those who cross the border illegally, people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela can apply online with a financial sponsor. They must fly to an American airport at their own expense.

About 100,000 Nicaraguans have been granted two-year permits eligible to work since the end of 2022.

Bérrios arrived in 2023 as the US election campaigns were gaining momentum. But talking about mass deportations ultimately made her nervous. Returning to Nicaragua was not an option, so in December she settled in Ireland, where she had some friends from the student movement.

“I felt like Ireland was a land of opportunity,” she said.

Asylum systems in the European Union are largely standardized, but some differences make Ireland attractive, said Susan Fratzke, senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute’s International Program.

The resolution of asylum cases is moving faster than in the US, Fratzke said, and Ireland has not seen the strong pushback against asylum seekers that has occurred in some other European countries.

At Dublin airport, Bérrios handed her passport to an immigration officer and said she was requesting humanitarian protection. She was questioned about the name of the Irish president, answered correctly, and had her photo and fingerprints taken.

She was given a government-issued ID the next morning, valid for one year, and now shares a room with women from Somalia, Egypt and Pakistan at a hotel in a nearby town. They are free to come and go as they please, and the government pays for her shelter.

Bérrios is looking forward to enrolling in school while she waits for her work permit. An in-depth interview about her case would take place in eight to nine months, after which a decision on her asylum application would follow.

If all goes well, she could get permanent residency within a year, she said.

Bérrios was cheerful as she marveled at her journey with its twist of self-deportation: “You make sacrifices and always hope that things will turn out the way you think, maybe not exactly, but pretty close.”

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Sherman reported from Mexico City.