■ In this week’s Inner Loop:There’s a lot of reporting about immigrants forced out of the US. Senior politics writer Vittoria Elliott looked at those trying—and struggling—to leave.
A young, pregnant Venezuelan woman came to the US without documentation last year. After giving birth and settling in Ohio, she found that trying to stay in the country was too hard. She had no family support for herself and her newborn, and struggled to find work and housing. So she decided to self-deport.
The Trump administration has been virtually begging immigrants in the US to self-deport. It’s self-deportation, the White House says, or risk the wrath of ICE, the country’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
But self-deportation has been nearly impossible for this woman and others like her, lawyers and immigration activists tell WIRED. Guidance from the US government for those who have decided to self-deport has been confusing and sparse, leaving many immigration attorneys and advocates in the dark. Some immigrants trying to leave the country voluntarily through government-endorsed mechanisms say they have found themselves in limbo or, worse, detained...
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