Since Donald Trump’s administration took office in January, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has promoted its efforts to push migrants to “self-deport.” Assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin told reporters early this month that the United States is now recording “sky-high levels of reverse migration,” even as official deportation numbers are reportedly lagging. Trump also recently floated the idea of offering migrants a stipend and a plane ticket if they voluntarily return to their countries of origin.

According to the League of United Latin American Citizens, a civil rights group, this upward trend in self-deportations is being driven by “increased legal threats, limited access to due process, and policies that make daily life unbearable.” The organization rejects the idea that self-deportation is a matter of free choice: “It’s a calculated policy goal. When fear replaces fair immigration reform, it becomes a form of forced exile.”

The United States has a long history of encouraging self-deportation, not only to expel migrants, but to push indigenous peoples from their land and ostracize black Americans. Trump’s tactics have echoes in US history, as well as historical parallels in the actions of foreign governments that have used the same strategies to manage internal populations.

But Trump’s actions are also part of a broader trend of hostility toward migrants and refugees globally, in which right-wing governments and movements have chosen to coerce immigrants to leave because of the unfeasibility of mass deportations.

Zeynep Şahin-Mencütek, a senior researcher at the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies, told Jacobin that the Trump administration’s efforts to encourage self-deportation “represent an extreme” example of xenophobic policies. We are, she said, witnessing “a global trend” in policies that favor the “coerced return of irregular migrants, rejected asylum seekers,” people accused of crimes, and refugees from countries that have been deemed “safe.”

While there are many examples of coercive migration policies across the world — from India’s citizenship law that excludes only Muslim migrants from naturalizing, to efforts in Iran and Pakistan to remove Afghan refugees — the majority have targeted Syrian refugees.

The onset of the war in Syria in 2011 displaced millions and shifted the course of national politics in neighboring Turkey. In 2016, Turkey signed a deal with the European Union to prevent migrants from reaching the bloc to declare asylum. Under the deal, Brussels sent Ankara billions of dollars to support Syrian refugees in Turkey. EU auditors have said it’s been difficult to track how Turkey has used those funds, though within the country, political parties have rallied voters by blaming refugees for the nation’s worsening economic crisis.

Last summer, xenophobic rhetoric from politicians, especially from the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the liberal opposition, and the far-right Victory Party (ZP), led to an explosion of anti-Syrian violence in the central city of Kayseri and elsewhere. Several days later, a leaker released a slightly outdated but extensive list of the personal information of thousands of foreigners, which included passport photos, phone numbers, and home addresses.

Leader of the ZP Ümit Özdağ was arrested in January for “public incitement to hatred” for the role his party played in the violence in Kayseri. But the incident was only the culmination of years of anti-refugee policy and discourse. During general elections in May 2023, campaign ads from the CHP that read “Süriyeliler gidecek” (“the Syrians will go”) lined main roads. The party in January — two months before the arrest of Istanbul’s CHP mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu ignited nationwide anti-government protests — called for Syrians to go “contribute to their own country’s economy.” Meanwhile, Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) routinely refers to Syrians as “our visitors.”

Even before migration became a political issue in Turkey, Syrians, especially those with temporary protection status, were already beset by arbitrary forms of harassment, official and otherwise. For instance, Syrians with the status are issued government ID cards that are several times larger than Turkish identification cards. This makes it impossible for these refugees to avoid revealing their status to passersby at police checkpoints or even the bank. Individuals and businesses have been have been attacked for using the Arabic language. And the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has accused the government of “forcefully relocating Syrian refugees to areas under its control in Syria.”

Abdulkadir al-Hassan, the pseudonym of a Turkey-based Syrian urbanist who studies migration and urban governance and spoke to Jacobin on condition of anonymity, said that under current rules, Turkey can’t officially deport asylum seekers to Syria, even after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December. As a result, the government labeled anyone who left Turkey for opposition-held territory in Syria as having made a voluntary departure.

“Maybe there were some voluntary returns, to the northern and western parts of Syria, which was under the influence of Turkey,” not the Assad regime, Hassan told Jacobin. “Because life may have been very hard [for them] in Turkey. So, they said: ‘Let me go back, it’s not under Assad.’”

“But in general, there was no such thing as a voluntary return — people were forced. On paper, it’s voluntary, but in practice, it’s not.” Hassan explains that when immigration officials detain Syrians who lack legal status, authorities may remove them from Turkey without any paper trail.

In cases where Syrian individuals with temporary protection are detained, authorities cannot remove the asylum seeker from Turkey without their consent. “So what some reports have found is that authorities can arrest you, and coerce you psychologically, with long detentions in harsh conditions, beatings, or maybe torture to sign a voluntary deportation order, in a language [the detainee] may not understand, as they may not be able to read or write in Turkish.”

Since December, Hassan says that he has noticed “there are two kinds of people” who returned to Syria almost immediately. Those who moved due to their work, such as journalists, and “those whose lives in Turkey are hell, compared to Syria . . . if you polled some of those here whose life is very hard, [I think you’d find] they are more willing to go back now.” The Turkish government estimated in March that more than 145,600 of the nearly three million Syrians in Turkey had left since the regime fell.

Meanwhile in the EU, the far right has levied the presence of asylum seekers to grow its influence in Germany, Austria, and elsewhere. It’s created space for the expansion of anti-refugee policies, in the absence of the ability to conduct mass deportations.

For example, the day after Assad fell, several EU nations froze the in-progress applications of Syrian asylum seekers, leaving them to choose between limbo in Europe or uncertainty in a Syria still dealing with sectarian violence — even the EU has not yet designated Syria as safe.

While the situation in Turkey and the EU echoes the tactics being used in the United States to coerce migrants into making the difficult choice to return to their countries of origin, the realities underpinning them are distinct.

“It’s important to note that the US has not experienced a [large increase in arrivals] of refugees due to the displacements in Ukraine, Syria, and Afghanistan,” Şahin-Mencütek told Jacobin. “As a result, the US does not share the same ‘burden’” as other countries to financially support migrants.

The United States hosts fewer refugees, asylum seekers, and people with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) than it does undocumented migrants, estimated to number around 14 million (though that’s in part because asylum applications for Mexican and Central American nationals are approved at a much lower rate than those from China or Venezuela, for example). Not only are undocumented migrants ineligible for much targeted state funding — they have fewer protections from deportation. While Turkey, for example, is on paper at least unable to expel much of its Syrian population due to their protected status — the United States faces far fewer restrictions when it comes to irregular migrants.

“High-profile detentions are uncommon in other countries, and raids are rare. [But] the direct threat made by President Trump regarding this issue is explicit,” Şahin-Mencütek said. “In other countries, it is often far-right opposition party leaders who use such assertive language, while actual policymakers tend to adopt a more balanced approach. The prevalence of violence appears more pronounced in the US.”

And while Trump’s self-deportation campaigns have targeted the undocumented community, the administration has also been attempting to end protected status categories and even revoke residency for some, which would leave more migrants vulnerable. For example, in April, the administration has revoked Social Security numbers for some TPS recipients, calling on them to self-deport — reportedly along with Afghan refugees who entered the United States legally after the Taliban takeover in 2021. Together, those factors have allowed the Trump administration to use harshly coercive tactics to target migrants who would otherwise be financially and logistically difficult to formally deport in large numbers.

It’s not necessary to turn to history to find examples of how coercive tactics have pushed migrants to abandon the United States in the past. Tawheeda Wahabzada is cofounder of ONWARD, a network for undocumented young people who plan to leave the United States due to its immigration policies and the seeming impossibility of adjusting their statuses. Wahabzada was undocumented but self-deported during Trump’s first term in 2020. She sees Trump’s coercive immigration policies having a much larger impact as the administration has turned its sights on migrants with TPS, international students, and even naturalized US citizens.

“We are seeing that the administration is a lot more insidious, where even lawful permanent residents and visa holders are at risk,” Wahabzada told Jacobin. “Therefore many immigrant communities — documented or undocumented — are living in a perpetual state of fear.”