Migration

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Spain Is an Example to the World

Aug. 11, 2025
Five migrants walking forward in a row, draped with red blankets.

Migrants on the Spanish island of Gran Canaria last year.Credit...Borja Suarez/Reuters

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By Omar G. Encarnación

Mr. Encarnación is an expert on Spanish politics.

Spain is having a moment bucking Western political trends. The country has recently recognized Palestine as a state, resisted President Trump’s demand that NATO members increase their defense spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product and doubled down on D.E.I. programs. But there’s no better example of Spain going its own way than immigration. At a time when many Western democracies are trying to keep immigrants out, Spain is boldly welcoming them in.

The details are striking. In May, new regulations went into effect that eased migrants’ ability to obtain residency and work permits, and the Spanish Parliament began debating a bill to grant amnesty to undocumented immigrants. These reforms could open a path to Spanish citizenship to more than one million people. Most of them are part of a historic immigration surge that between 2021 and 2023 brought nearly three million people born outside the European Union to Spain.

Demand has something to do with it: Like many Western democracies, Spain needs more people. Last year the national birthrate was 1.4, the second lowest in the European Union and well below the 2.1 threshold needed to maintain the country’s population level of around 48 million people. Spain also has a big economy — the fourth largest in the E.U. — fueled by a travel and tourism industry that is brimming with jobs that most Spaniards do not want.

But unlike in other countries, backlash has been strikingly muted. That’s partly because some of these pro-migrant measures stem from society at large. The push for the undocumented immigrants’ amnesty did not originate with the government, tellingly, but with a popular petition that garnered 600,000 signatures and was endorsed by 900 nongovernmental organizations, business groups and even the Spanish Conference of Bishops. The government, in turn, has designed a humane and pragmatic approach, offering an example for other countries to emulate.

There are, to be sure, some very Spanish reasons for the exception. Because of its vast overseas empire, Spain was for centuries a mass exporter of people. During the Spanish Civil War and the four-decades-long dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco, some two million people were forced to leave the country, fleeing famine, violence and political repression. Up until the 1970s, Spain provided migrant laborers to farms and factories across Europe. After the 2008 financial crisis, which sent unemployment soaring to 25 percent, thousands of professionals left Spain for jobs abroad.

This rich and complex history helps explain the relatively high level of tolerance for immigration among Spaniards. In 2019, a Pew survey found that Spain had by far the most positive attitude toward immigrants in Europe. This was no outlier. A 2021 study of polls going back about 30 years showed that “Spain has consistently maintained more open attitudes toward immigration than the European average, with less rejection and a greater appreciation of its contributions to society and the economy.”

Spain’s fragmented sense of national identity is another important factor. The strength of regional nationalism in places like Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia makes it harder for right-wing politicians to mobilize the public against immigration through nationalist appeals and xenophobic arguments. A Spanish version of “France for the French,” the doctrine of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, would be absurd in Spain. It took until 2019 for an explicitly anti-migrant party, the far-right Vox, to even enter the Spanish Parliament.

Ultimately, however, Spain’s immigration politics owe most to the administration of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, one of the last exponents of social democracy in Europe. Although decidedly liberal, Mr. Sánchez’s approach is far from an experiment with open borders. Instead, it’s as pragmatic as it is deliberate. It’s true he has built-in advantages not shared by other European leaders. But by marrying practical solutions to an uplifting message, he has provided a case study in how to build support for progressive immigration policies.

For starters, the government smartly prioritized immigrants from Latin America, allowing them to apply for citizenship after just two years. Fluent in Spanish and overwhelmingly Catholic, Latin American immigrants blend with the local culture even in the least cosmopolitan parts of Spain. A case in point are Venezuelans, who are now barred from entering the United States, thanks to Mr. Trump. To enter Spain, they need only a plane ticket and a valid passport. In the first three months of the year, 25,000 took up the opportunity.

A lot of strategic thinking has gone into using immigration to alleviate some of Spain’s biggest problems. Labor shortages in technology, hospitality, agriculture and elderly care, for example, are being addressed by granting international students work permits. Immigrants have also been incentivized to settle in so-called Empty Spain, those parts of the country where the population has dried up. Some of the 200,000 Ukrainian refugees who have settled in Spain since 2022 have brought new life to villages and towns on the brink of extinction.

Most important, perhaps, Mr. Sánchez has excelled at framing the case for immigration. He has emphasized its economic benefits, including bringing younger workers into the social security system and filling jobs unwanted by Spaniards. An expanding economy is adding authority to these arguments. Since the pandemic, the Spanish economy has outperformed its European counterparts. Last year, while Germany, France and Italy experienced modest growth or even a contraction, Spain grew a healthy 3.2 percent.

Even so, Mr. Sánchez has not shied away from speaking in moral terms, drawing on Spain’s history as a nation of migrants and refugees. “We have to remember the odysseys of our mothers and fathers, our grandfathers and grandmothers in Latin America, in the Caribbean and Europe,” he told Parliament last year. “And understand that our duty now, especially now, is to be that welcoming, tolerant, supportive society that they would have liked to find.”

How long Spain will continue to extend the welcome mat is an open question. Polls show that concerns about immigration among Spaniards are rising, driven in part by the sensationalist coverage of the arrival of African refugees. Thousands have drowned in recent years attempting to reach Spain, and those who manage to enter the country are generally deported. Right-wing parties, especially Vox, are exploiting this humanitarian crisis. Should Vox manage to enter government after the next election, which must be held before August 2027, a turn against immigration will certainly follow.

For now, though, Spain is proving an important point: A generous immigration policy is not a threat to the nation or to a thriving economy. More than that, it is a resource for growth and renewal that Spain’s peers spurn at their cost.

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St. Patrick’s Cathedral to Unveil Mural Celebrating City’s Immigrants

Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan’s art commission hits a hot button. “I thought they might say, ‘We don’t want to wade in these waters’ — and the opposite happened,” the painter said.

Video: https://vp.nyt.com/video/2025/08/12/146 ... g_720p.mp4

The artist Adam Cvijanovic applies a finishing touch to his mural, “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding,” which depicts the arrival of immigrants to New York City in the 19th century and the present.

By Arthur LubowVisuals by George Etheredge
Published Aug. 14, 2025
Updated Aug. 15, 2025
At a time when immigration is a bitterly divisive issue, with the Trump administration ramping up arrests and deportations, St. Patrick’s Cathedral will unveil a huge mural next month depicting the arrival of immigrants to New York City in the 19th century and the present.

“It’s a celebration of a city that has been built by immigrants and where immigrants have been welcomed,” Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, who is also the archbishop of New York, said in an interview in his official residence adjoining St. Patrick’s. The first major art commission in the cathedral since bronze doors were installed at the Fifth Avenue entrance in 1949, it will be dedicated during a mass on Sept. 21.

Roughly 21 feet tall, the mural, of 12 large panels, was painted by the Brooklyn-based artist Adam Cvijanovic (pronounced svee-YAHN-o-vitch), who titled it (with a slight word adjustment) after a song popularized by Elvis Costello, “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding.” Along with immigration, he depicted a historic event dear to the cardinal’s heart: the Holy Apparition at Knock, in which 15 people in the Irish village of that name in 1879 reported seeing the Virgin Mary, two saints and the Lamb of God, a symbol of Jesus Christ, in a vision that lasted for about two hours on a wall of the parish church.

ImageA portrait of the artist Adam Cvijanovic, with salt-and-pepper hair and beard, looking toward the camera.

Adam Cvijanovic, who grew up in Cambridge, Mass., is known for his large-scale realistic murals.

Six artists competed for the commission in 2023. Dolan and a committee of art advisers and donors favored Cvijanovic’s proposal, which is in a realistic style. “The rest of them were a little too Picasso-like,” Dolan said. “I wanted something that people could look at and see the Holy Apparition at Knock, and not that you’d have to be on LSD to figure it out.”

Cvijanovic, 64, who is self-taught, grew up in Cambridge, Mass., where his Yugoslavian-born father taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He has made a career out of creating large murals that commemorate historic events and real-life characters, with a romanticism that lies somewhere between 19th-century landscape painting and portraiture and 21st-century video games and commercial advertising.

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Mother Cabrini, with a halo around her head, and the Rev. Félix Varela behind her, in the midst of present-day immigrants to New York.

Mother Cabrini, whose halo indicates her sainthood, and the Rev. Félix Varela behind her, appear in the midst of present-day immigrants to New York.

Among his past works are a series completed in 2023, at the Major General Emmett J. Bean Federal Center in Indianapolis, of floor-to-ceiling paintings of 17 unpeopled landscapes around the world where American soldiers have fought; and on an equally grand scale in 2008, a group of 16 ½ foot tall depictions of the Babylonian sets in D.W. Griffiths’ 1916 silent-film extravaganza, “Intolerance.”

The St. Patrick’s mural will be a lasting legacy for Dolan, who, when he turned 75 in February, submitted his resignation as cardinal and archbishop. (The Vatican has not named a successor.) A week before his birthday, he had strongly criticized an assertion by Vice President JD Vance that the Roman Catholic bishops were in favor of immigration because the church profited from resettlement funds. He called it “inaccurate,” “scurrilous” and “very nasty.” In fact, he said, the church loses money “hand over fist” in caring for immigrants.

Image
Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan in a black suit, Roman collar and a silver necklace with a crucifix.

“It’s a celebration of a city that has been built by immigrants and where immigrants have been welcomed,” Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan said of the mural, which is the first major art commission in the cathedral since bronze doors were installed at the Fifth Avenue entrance in 1949.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

As immigration became a hot-button topic, Cvijanovic worried that the archdiocese might revise its brief. “I thought they might say, ‘We don’t want to wade in these waters’ — and the opposite happened,” he recounted. “They said, ‘We want to go right ahead.’”

Like his patron, Cvijanovic felt that the mural at St. Patrick’s should be accessible. “Having the painting work for people who have no relation to the devotional activity is important,” he said, standing in front of the painted panels in the hangar-like studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard where he had made them. “I want people to be able to see themselves in it. There’s a lot of great public art where that doesn’t happen.”

He brought up a controversial Cor-ten steel sculpture by Richard Serra that was installed in downtown Manhattan in 1981 but removed eight years later after a wave of protests from people who worked near the Federal plaza where it stood. “I love Richard Serra myself, but there was a relating problem with ‘Tilted Arc,’” Cvijanovic said. “This painting should be pretty accessible on a basic level.”

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Close-up of a hand dipping a brush into oil paint.

Cvijanovic dips a brush into oil paint.

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A sketch of two first responders in blue uniforms.

The artist initially sketched the mural (including the first responders) on Tyvek.

In addition to immigrants and the apparition, Cvijanovic portrayed five first responders in uniform, intended to stir memories of the World Trade Center disaster. “For the Irish and Italians who came here, usually fire and police departments is the first good job you could get,” Cvijanovic said. “There’s a long relationship between the church and the services.” Chins up, the first responders face forward jauntily, in a self-confident pose that feels very contemporary. “I wanted to make an American painting,” Cvijanovic said. “As much as I’m drawing from Caravaggio, I’m also drawing from posters for ‘X-Men.’”

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A replica of the cathedral and Rockefeller Center that the artist had constructed rest on a chair.

A replica of the cathedral and Rockefeller Center that the artist had constructed. In the mural, the model is held by an angel.

The theme of immigration wasn’t the initial focus of the mural. The cathedral was dedicated in the same year that the Apparition at Knock occurred. Looking for a way to add what he called some “snap, crackle and pop” to the entry vestibule, which is known in architectural terminology as the narthex, Dolan — who visited Knock on his first trip to Ireland in 1973 and has returned many times since — thought a picture of that legendary miracle might brighten the entrance’s “dull and somber dreariness.” When he brought the idea to the advisory committee, he was encouraged to broaden his vision. “They said, ‘Show the Apparition at Knock, but let’s go from there to the immigration that flows out of it,’” he explained.

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The mural will be installed in the narthex, just behind the last row of pews.

The cathedral, which is named for the patron saint of Ireland, moved uptown from its site in the NoLIta neighborhood (where the original building survives) at the tail end of the era of mass Irish immigration, which began during the Great Famine of the mid-19th century. Newcomers from Ireland constituted the bulk of the archdiocese’s worshipers at that time. Dolan’s Irish-born predecessor, Archbishop John Hughes, led the drive to construct a magnificent cathedral.

“He was frustrated about raising money,” remarked Dolan, who wore Hughes’ pectoral cross on a cord around his neck as he described the new artistic addition. “He said, ‘This cathedral will be built on the pennies of immigrants.’” Dolan noted that by contrast, raising $3 million to underwrite the creation, installation, lighting and conservation of the Cvijanovic mural took less than a day — paid for, he added with a chuckle, by “the big checks of the grandchildren of the immigrants.”

To the right of the cathedral’s central door, large panels will depict a group of 19th-century Irish immigrants, dressed in the bonnets, pinafores and caps of the period, as they descend from a ship that still holds many yet to disembark. (One has the face of Dolan’s mother.)

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In his studio, the artist puts finishing touches on the section of the mural that depicts 19th-century Irish immigrants.

In his studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Cvijanovic places his brush on the section of the mural that depicts 19th-century Irish immigrants. On the left are the first responders, and Pierre Toussaint, a formerly enslaved Haitian American who became a wealthy philanthropist, is visible on the extreme left.

“I wanted this to be cool and blue,” Cvijanovic said. “And I wanted it to evoke an old film. It’s also what they were wearing. This is before bright dyes. The colors were very muted.” Hovering above them are the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph and St. John the Evangelist, the figures that were reported by the witnesses of the apparition.

Because the vision at Knock appeared in the pouring rain, Cvijanovic enlisted a gilder to apply lines of platinum and gold. On a realistic level, they represent precipitation. But he regards the gilding as more than that. “It’s talking to the Art Deco in Rockefeller Center across the street,” he said. “And it’s talking about the pipes of the organ that is across from the narthex. And I wanted it to be a representation of an abstract God. Because the gold is reacting with the light, it’s stronger than anything I can paint.”

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In the artist's studio are two icons and a wooden cross that belonged to his father.

The artist, who was raised in the Eastern Orthodox church, has two icons and a wooden cross that belonged to his father in the studio.

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The gold gilders’ work area at Adam Cvijanovic’s studio.

Modern-day immigrants — Hispanic, Asian, Black — are depicted to the left of the door. Seated on their luggage, staring in different directions, they seem, unlike their Irish counterparts, to be waiting. Above them is the Lamb of God on an altar. In their midst is the Italian-born Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, known as Mother Cabrini, who established orphanages and hospitals for immigrants in this country and was the first American to be canonized as a saint. Behind her is the Rev. Félix Varela, a Cuban patriot who fled to New York, where, beginning in the 1820s, he established churches that ministered to immigrant communities in Lower Manhattan.

Cabrini and Varela were on the archdiocese’s wish-list of figures for the murals, along with Dorothy Day, Archbishop Hughes, and Pierre Toussaint, a formerly enslaved Haitian American who became a wealthy hairdresser and philanthropist in New York in the early 19th century. Al Smith, a favorite of Dolan — who keeps the New York governor’s cigar humidor in his residence — also pops up in a mural, brandishing his trademark cigar.

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The five first responders on the right are in counterpoint to (from the left) Archbishop John Hughes, Kateri Tekakwitha, Al Smith, Dorothy Day and Pierre Toussaint.

At Cvijanovic’s suggestion, Kateri Tekakwitha, a 17th-century Mohawk-Algonquin woman who converted to Catholicism and was the first Indigenous North American to be canonized, was added to the roster. “I figured if this is all about immigrants, you’ve got to have someone to represent the people who were here,” he said. “Because the land wasn’t empty.”

To render the figures, he assembled about 20 models at a time on the deck of a house in suburban Somerset County, N.J., near where his wife, Julia Carbonetta, grew up and her parents still reside. Many of the people in the painting are her high school friends and their children. It took him half a year to sketch the compositions on Tyvek, the polyethylene wrapping fabric that is typically used for housing insulation. He transferred those templates to canvas, much as his Renaissance predecessors “pounced” full-size sketches, known as cartoons, by pricking holes and pushing through charcoal. The painting took another nine months.

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A desk with brush pots filled with various paint brushes, paint rags and other art materials.


“One day, there was my wife posing and a photographer and someone pouncing the cartoon, and the gilders,” he recalled. “That night I said to my wife, ‘You just saw something amazing. You saw a Renaissance studio, with all these guys here to make a painting for the church.’”

As traditional as Cvijanovic’s painterly technique is the Roman Catholic’s commitment to immigrants in New York.“Something very special in the history of the New York Archdiocese is the compassion and support of immigrants that goes back to Hughes and the 19th century,” said James T. Fisher, professor emeritus at Fordham University and the author of “Communion of Immigrants: A History of Catholics in America” (2007). He noted that during the 1950s and early 1960s, Cardinal Francis Spellman enthusiastically welcomed the influx of Puerto Ricans to the city, urging priests to learn Spanish. “They really have this legacy they can point to,” he continued. “Institutionally, the mural is going to work very well.”

Cardinal Dolan, asked if he considered receding from the political controversy that may greet the unveiling of the mural, said he never wavered.

“There is a bit of timeliness with the controversy over immigrants,” he said. “If somebody says this speaks to the sacredness of the immigrants and to a cherished part of the legacy of the church, that’s all to the good. Immigration used to be a unifying principle. It was almost patriotic to be pro-immigrant. Now it’s a cause of division. I’m hoping this will help bring people together.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/arts ... dolan.html

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Immigrant Population in U.S. Drops for the First Time in Decades

An analysis of census data by the Pew Research Center found that between January and June, the foreign-born population declined by nearly 1.5 million.


Aggressive enforcement has created a climate of fear in immigrant communities across the country. Above, Corona, Queens, in 2023.Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York Times


For the first time in decades, more immigrants are leaving the United States than arriving, a new study finds, an early indication that President Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda is leading people to depart — whether through deportation or by choice.

An analysis of new census data released on Thursday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that between January and June, the foreign-born population in the United States — both lawful and unlawful residents — declined by nearly 1.5 million. In June, the country was home to 51.9 million immigrants, down from 53.3 million six months earlier.

Officials from the Trump administration have applauded the net outflow, asserting that pressures on government services have eased and that job markets have rebounded. And some supporters of the immigration crackdown say it hasn’t gone far enough.

But experts predict looming negative economic and demographic consequences for the United States if the trend persists. Immigrants are a critical work force in many sectors, and the country’s reliance on them is growing as more baby boomers retire.

After campaigning on a promise of mass deportations, Mr. Trump has introduced sweeping measures to reduce immigration. His administration has restricted access to asylum at the southern border, tightened visa requirements for students and tech workers and deployed thousands of federal agents to detain and deport undocumented immigrants. The crackdown has led immigrants to leave the country voluntarily and has discouraged others from coming.

Lillian Divina Leite, 46, chose to use the government’s new self-deportation program to return to Brazil. A housekeeper in Charlotte, N.C., Ms. Leite said that she had begun to panic when she saw immigrants being “hunted down like hardened criminals.”

“I got really scared,” said Ms. Leite, who had fallen out of legal status after overstaying a six-month tourist visa.

“I thought, I haven’t done anything wrong in my life,” she said, “and suddenly I could be imprisoned.”

Despite the study’s findings, Kevin Lynn, executive director of the Institute for Sound Public Policy, which advocates for less immigration, said that foreign workers who enter lawfully continue to pour into the United States and undermine Americans.

“There has been no letup,” he said. “People coming here legally, whether on green cards or employment visas, are impacting American workers at all strata, whether low-skilled or high-skilled.”

Net migration — the difference between the number of immigrants arriving and departing — has turned negative, a shift that the chief Pew demographer, Jeffrey Passel, called a “demographic certainty” so far in 2025. His team’s analysis did not calculate a separate number for undocumented immigrants, who seem likely to represent the largest number of departures, because heightened enforcement probably diminished immigrants’ participation in the census survey that was used to make estimates, he said.

They may have been undercounted, which would suggest the drop is not as severe, or their low participation could mask an even more striking decline.

The United States experienced negative net immigration in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, when between 400,000 and one million Mexicans and Mexican Americans left, many under coercive repatriation programs.

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Immigrants in handcuffs make their way through a crowd of demonstrators in Chicago. Immigration officials wearing masks and vests with patches reading “Police HSI” stand on either side and behind the immigrants.

The Trump administration has introduced sweeping measures to reduce immigration. Detainees were taken into custody in June in Chicago.Credit...Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

Jeremy Beck, co-president of NumbersUSA, a group that favors curbs on immigration, described a decline in the number of immigrants as “a good thing for workers who will benefit from a tighter labor market, and for communities whose infrastructure was overwhelmed during the border crisis.”

Whether negative net migration becomes a lasting phenomenon depends on how far the Trump administration goes to achieve its goals, experts say, but the Pew findings echo trends identified by other recent studies.

In July, the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute projected net migration in 2025 would be flat or would even drop and predicted that the Trump administration’s policies would continue to squeeze out low- and high-skilled foreign workers at least through 2026.

“A rapid decline in immigration is going to cause economic harm,” said Tara Watson, an economist at the Brookings Institution and one of the authors of the report.

Political pushback and legal challenges could lead the Trump administration to ease its crackdown and, thus, soften the impact, she said. But legislation recently passed by the Republican-controlled Congress has significantly increased funding for immigration enforcement, suggesting that the restrictive approach could extend throughout Mr. Trump’s term.

If so, “we could go into a spiral of continued decline,” said Ms. Watson, which could undermine U.S. competitiveness for global talent.

“If things are really bad, we no longer are the place where people go to do science or tech, and that could have generational repercussions,” she said.

On Day 1 in office, Mr. Trump signed several immigration-related orders. Since then, his administration has intensified efforts to curb immigration, and the president recently celebrated the prospect of negative net migration.

As he wrote in a Truth Social post on Aug. 4: “Promises made. Promises kept. Negative net migration for the first time in 50 years!”

In addition to targeting undocumented migrants, the administration has introduced measures that have undermined legal immigration.

It has paused the refugee program, which offered green cards and a path to citizenship to people fleeing persecution. It has increased screening and vetting of visa applicants, which experts expect will reduce the numbers of foreign workers and students.

The Trump administration has ended several Biden-era programs that had allowed people from troubled countries such as Haiti to live and work temporarily in the United States. Thousands of immigrants are set to lose their protected status in coming months.

Migration across the southern border, which had begun to slow under asylum restrictions imposed late in the term of President Joseph R. Biden Jr., has declined further since Mr. Trump returned to office.

Employment opportunities have long been the primary draw for immigrants, with migration typically slowing during economic downturns. During the Great Recession, more Mexicans without authorized status left the United States than arrived.

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Immigrant workers in red shirts, blue pants and red hats trim coffee trees on a verdant farm in Hawaii.

Agricultural enterprises, such as this coffee farm in Hawaii, often rely on immigrant workers. Farms, restaurants and assisted-living facilities are already grappling with a shortage of workers.Credit...Michelle Mishina Kunz for The New York Times

But the current decline is unfolding in response to stringent policies and at a time when the United States needs immigration to offset a falling birthrate and an aging population.

“We have more and more people over 65 and not in the work force,” said Dowell Myers, a demography professor at the University of Southern California. “A new baby won’t help us for 20 years, but a young immigrant helps us immediately.”

“If you take a sledgehammer to the labor force by cutting immigrant flows,” he said, “we are all going to be seeing the consequences in our everyday lives.”

Restaurants, farms and assisted-living facilities are already grappling with labor shortages that could become more pronounced, he said. Many of those roles are filled by undocumented immigrants, whose population reached 14 million in 2023, according to Pew, and who accounted for 4 percent of the total U.S. population and about a quarter of the foreign-born population.

California had the most unauthorized residents in 2023, at 2.3 million, followed closely by Texas, with 2.1 million. Florida had the largest increase, adding 700,000 for a total of 1.6 million.

Through mid-2024, the unauthorized population continued to grow at a fast clip, before starting to contract following policy changes in 2025, according to a preliminary Pew analysis.

About half of the 14 million undocumented immigrants in 2023 had been in the United States for more than a decade, and 4.6 million U.S.-born children have parents who are in the country without lawful status.

Pew’s estimates are based on an analysis of Census Bureau data, including the American Community Survey and the Current Population Survey.

Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said last week in a news release that a decline in the population of undocumented immigrants “is already being felt nationwide, from reduced strain on public services to a resurgence in local job markets.”

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is holding a record 60,000 immigrants in detention, and that number is expected to soar as planned facilities open. Confined immigrants often agree to be swiftly deported rather than languish in custody while awaiting court rulings on whether they can remain in the United States.

Aggressive enforcement has created a climate of fear, disrupting everyday life for immigrant families. Across the country, many are limiting outings. Reports that some deportees are being sent to third countries, including South Sudan, or to their broken home countries have led some to self-deport rather than risk being detained and deported.

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A Honduran immigrant wearing an orange shirt, black pants and brown sandals lies in a barren holding cell.

A Honduran immigrant who federal officials said had a criminal background was detained in May at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office near Miami.Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Patrick Garcia, executive director of Embrace Carolinas, an advocacy group in Charlotte, N.C., is aware of at least 10 families who have self-deported to South and Central America.

“Something that was rare has become normal,” he said, adding that “my prediction is that departures will increase as Christmas and winter approach.”

“People are making as much money as they can to leave by the end of the year,” Mr. Garcia said.

Cratchit Aime, a Haitian immigrant in Springfield, Ohio, said he intended to return with his family to Brazil, where they had previously lived, to avoid being deported to his homeland.

“There’s no way we will go to Haiti — it’s under control of bandits,” he said, referring to gangs that control swaths of the country.

In Southern California, where arrests surged in June, some longtime undocumented immigrants are choosing to depart on their own terms.

“They’d rather leave with something after decades of work here, rather than be detained and deported with nothing,” said Luz Gallegos, executive director of TODEC, an immigrant services provider in Riverside County.

On May 18, Ms. Leite submitted information on the CBP Home app, the self-deportation app introduced by the Trump administration to encourage undocumented people to leave the country. By using it, she could be eligible for free airfare, two checked bags and $1,000 in cash after arriving in Brazil.

A few weeks later, she was notified by text message to call a number to work out logistics. She called repeatedly for a week, leaving voice mail messages that went unanswered.

Finally, on June 16, she received a call. Ms. Leite was booked on a United Airlines flight leaving on July 2 to São Paulo through Chicago. She landed in Brazil on July 3.

About two weeks later, she took delivery of $1,000 via Western Union.

“It’s a huge relief to be back home,” she said, adding that “police sirens still make me nervous.”

On social media, she has been busy offering tips for people who are eager to self-deport.

Miriam Jordan reports from a grass roots perspective on immigrants and their impact on the demographics, society and economy of the United States.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/us/i ... trump.html