Some immigrants are already leaving the US in 'self-deportations' as Trump's threats loom

Michel Bérrios left the United States a few days before the new year, giving President-elect Donald Trump's campaign for mass deportations a small victory before they even started.

A former leader of a Nicaraguan student uprising, Bérrios had been in the U.S. legally, with nearly a year remaining under President Joe Biden's unprecedented use of humanitarian parole authority for citizens of certain vulnerable countries. But harsh talk during the U.S. election campaign filled her with anxious memories of hiding from authorities back home.

Advocates and immigration experts who have noticed such departures say Bérrios' decision to leave the U.S., despite her legal status, shows how uncertainty and threats have led a growing number of people to leave the U.S. before Trump takes office on Monday.

There isn't data on these departures, but history has seen other eras of public backlash that drove migrants — with or without legal status — out.

Trump and his allies are counting on this “self-deportation,” the idea that life can be made unbearable enough to make people leave.

“Because (the U.S.) is not a third world country like the ones many of us come from, I thought there would be a different culture here, and it was a rude awakening to realize that you and your family are not welcome,” Bérrios, 31, said days before her departure.

Self-deportation helps Trump to achieve his goals without the government having to spend or do anything in such cases. Trump has long said he wanted to deport millions of migrants but never deported more than 350,000 a year in his first term. Only 41,500 detention beds are funded this year, so carrying out massive deportations has significant logistical hurdles.

"If you wanna self-deport, you should self-deport because, again, we know who you are, and we’re gonna come and find you,” Trump’s incoming border czar Tom Homan has said.

Bérrios had been living legally with her cousin in California, east of San Francisco, working at the front desk of an auto repair shop with Trump supporters, but she knew it was temporary — especially once Trump was elected. Anti-immigrant comments by her colleagues increased, and her discomfort grew.

In Nicaragua, “I spent five years hiding. I had to change my routine. I had to completely change my life. I stopped visiting my parents, my friends,” Bérrios said of President Daniel Ortega’s crackdown on dissent. With Trump returning to power, "that uncertainty has returned.”

Such fear is natural for anyone without permanent legal status, said Melanie Nezer, vice president for advocacy and external relations at the Women’s Refugee Commission. People with temporary permission to live and work, like Bérrios, may see that status end soon.

“Many, many people are in this situation,” she said. About 1 million people have temporary protected status and about another 500,000 like Bérrios have humanitarian parole granted to asylum-seekers from four countries: Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Trump has said he wants to end both.

Until 2018, Bérrios led a fairly normal life in Nicaragua, working at a call center in Managua. She studied marketing and hoped to pursue a master’s degree in dance.

Then changes to Nicaragua’s social security system drove retirees to protest. When they were roughed up by police and Ortega supporters, students came to their aid.

Deadly clashes followed, and university campuses became strongholds of resistance in what became a referendum on the government itself. The government declared the protesters “terrorists” and alleged they were organized by foreign powers, especially the United States.

Bérrios became a protest leader at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua’s Managua campus. Then known only by a code name, she told The Associated Press from hiding in July 2018, “Now, I really have no future.”

Hundreds of other protesters were imprisoned, many tortured and more recently expelled from the country and stripped of citizenship.

“There was always the uncertainty that they could come after me, that they could take me to prison,” Bérrios said last year of Nicaraguan authorities. “That’s why I decided, well, maybe the United States can help me make a change for my peace of mind.”

A cousin, a U.S. citizen in California, offered to sponsor Bérrios last year. Under Biden's strategy to create legal pathways while severely limiting asylum to those who cross the border illegally, people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela can apply online with a financial sponsor. They must fly to a U.S. airport at their expense.

About 100,000 Nicaraguans have come on two-year permits with eligibility to work since late 2022.

Bérrios arrived in 2023 as the U.S. election campaigns gained momentum. But talk of mass deportations eventually unnerved her. Returning to Nicaragua was not an option, so in December she settled on Ireland, where she had a couple of friends from the student movement.

“I felt like Ireland was a country of opportunity,” she said.

Asylum systems in the European Union are largely standardized, but some differences make Ireland attractive, said Susan Fratzke, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute’s International Program.

The resolution of asylum cases is faster than in the U.S., Fratzke said, and Ireland has not seen the strong pushback against asylum-seekers that has occurred in some other European countries.

At Dublin's airport, Bérrios handed her passport to an immigration official and said she was requesting humanitarian protection. She was quizzed on the name of Ireland’s president, answering correctly, and had her photo and fingerprints taken.

She got a government-issued identification card the next morning, valid for a year, and now shares a room with women from Somalia, Egypt and Pakistan in a hotel in a nearby town. They are free to come and go as they please, and the government pays for her lodging.

Bérrios looks forward to enrolling in school while she waits for her work permit. An in-depth interview about her case should come in eight or nine months and a decision on her asylum request would follow.

If all goes well, she could receive permanent residency in as soon as a year, she said.

Bérrios was buoyant as she marveled at her journey with the self-deportation twist: “You make sacrifices and always hope that things will turn out like you think, maybe not exactly, but pretty close.”

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Sherman reported from Mexico City.