285 South Quotes Steve Yale-Loehr: Self-Deportation Leads to Arrest

In An Augusta Man Decided to ‘Self-Deport.’ The Government Arrested Him Anyway, Steve noted that although U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) website says that people using the self-deportation app will be “deprioritized,” there’s nothing that actually prohibits ICE from targeting them. At the same time, he added, ICE’s highest deportation priority under any presidential administration is people with criminal records and those, like David, with final deportation orders. “It seems that ICE is working at cross-purposes with itself,” he said. “Because, on the one hand, they are encouraging people to self-deport, and their website says that if you do self-deport, you are a lower priority for being picked up. But on the other hand, here we have an instance where ICE did arrest and detain someone who had applied for self-deportation. So it’s like the immigrants can’t win no matter what they do.”