A record share of detained immigrants are opting to leave the United States voluntarily, according to a new analysis of immigration court data reviewed by CBS News.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
A record percentage of detained illegal aliens are choosing voluntary departure rather than continuing to fight removal cases in immigration court, according to a new analysis of federal court records.
A CBS News review of decades of immigration court data, available here, found that 28% of all completed removal cases involving detainees in 2025 ended in voluntary departure — the highest share ever recorded. The percentage rose nearly every month throughout the year, reaching 38% in December. The analysis does not include individuals who were not granted hearings before an immigration judge, such as those placed in expedited removal proceedings.
The findings come as Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention levels reached new highs. Approximately 73,000 individuals were being held in custody in mid-January, the largest number ever reported by the Department of Homeland Security.
Immigration attorneys interviewed by CBS News said many detainees now see little likelihood of success in court and are choosing to depart rather than remain in detention for extended periods.
“As pathways to freedom have narrowed in immigration courts across the United States, a record number of detainees are giving up their cases and voluntarily leaving the country,” CBS News reported in its analysis.
Vilma Palacios, 22, agreed to return to Honduras in late December after spending six months in detention in Basile, Louisiana. “It’s set up for every individual who is detained to get to the point where they’re just emotionally drained and exhausted through it all of the way that we’re being treated, to just say, ‘OK, all I want is my freedom,’” she told CBS News.
Palacios had been in the United States since she was 6 years old. She said she and her family were detained for a month at the border in 2010 before being released to pursue an asylum case. Court records indicate her case was administratively closed in 2015. In a statement to CBS News, a DHS spokesperson said Palacios “freely admitted to being in the U.S. illegally” and “never sought or gained any legal status.” Palacios disputed that characterization, saying she had been awaiting a work permit renewal at the time of her arrest.
She described her time in detention as emotionally exhausting. “Everything was taken from me, like being ripped apart from every person that I loved, and being surrounded with people that I had never met in my life, and [ICE] having control over every movement that I made, was just something very difficult to me,” she said. “It got to the point where I didn’t see that I had no other option but just to say, OK, just please give me my freedom back.”
Palacios said women in detention faced delays in medical treatment. “Many women would always come up to me, or come up to the officers, and complain about the waiting time, that they weren’t receiving the treatment that they needed, that they were sick, and still had to wait two, three, four weeks, even months after, to be called,” she said.
Jen Grant, a supervising attorney at the Legal Aid Society in New York, told CBS News: “The conditions in the detention centers have never ever been worse because they’re so overcrowded.”
Bond outcomes have also shifted. According to the CBS News analysis, only 30% of bond rulings in 2025 were favorable to detainees, down from 59% in 2024.
Under the Trump administration, DHS moved to expand mandatory detention for those who entered the United States illegally, rather than limiting it to individuals apprehended near the border. DHS issued a memorandum, available here, and immigration court authorities removed judges’ bond discretion through guidance available here. In December, a California district judge ruled the broad application of mandatory detention unlawful, but the chief immigration judge issued nationwide guidance indicating the ruling was not binding, according to a memo obtained by the American Immigration Lawyers Association, available here.
A spokesperson for the Executive Office for Immigration Review stated: “Immigration judges are independent adjudicators and decide all matters before them, including requests for voluntary departure, on a case-by-case basis, according to U.S. immigration law, regulations, and precedent decisions.”
Asylum approval rates have also declined. Immigration court data analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, available here, show that while more than half of asylum requests were granted monthly between 2022 and 2024, only 29% were approved by December 2025.
Christopher Kinnison, an immigration attorney in Louisiana, told CBS News that some clients believe “that the likelihood of them winning their case is so much lower than it ever used to be.”
Another immigrant identified by initials U.G., who spent 13 months in detention, said she was relieved when a judge ordered her deportation. “I couldn’t fathom just continuing to sit there,” she said. “Every day that I sit here, I’m choosing to sit here. I can sign and have them remove me in three days.”
Palacios said that after her voluntary departure request was granted, she was flown to Honduras in handcuffs with metal restraints around her waist and feet. “It’s something that I feel like it’s very inhumane, the way that we are shackled and brought to our country,” she said. “It doesn’t seem like it’s a voluntary departure. It seemed that you’re still being held as a criminal, kind of like a hostage.”
The increase in voluntary departures follows expanded detention policies, reduced bond approvals, and declining asylum grant rates. DHS has reported that more than three million illegal aliens left the United States during the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, including over 675,000 formal deportations and an estimated 2.2 million self-deportations.
The administration has also promoted voluntary departures through the CBP Home app, offering incentives including $1,000 payments and complimentary flights to individuals who choose to leave before arrest and formal removal.
Original article
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