President Donald Trump’s return to the White House has brought sweeping changes to immigration policy, with immediate effects already rippling through the labor market. Under a revamped “self-deportation” initiative—central to Executive Order 14159, signed on Trump’s first day back in office—nearly one million illegal immigrants have reportedly left the country voluntarily in recent months.
The program, a key part of Trump’s broader strategy to reestablish law and order at the southern border, is now being seen as a quiet but significant victory for both immigration enforcement and American workers who are now back-filling those jobs.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the unauthorized immigrant population grew to over 15 million during former President Biden’s administration—a surge critics attribute to what they describe as a disregard for federal detention and border security laws. In contrast, Trump has reversed many Biden-era policies and equipped the Department of Homeland Security and ICE with a range of aggressive new tools, including expanded expedited removal authority and renewed partnerships with private detention facilities.
