Kristi Noem offers $1,000 and a free plane ticket to migrants who deport themselves

An earlier version of the photo caption misidentified a protestor. Ashley Warbington is featured in the image.

WASHINGTON – The Department of Homeland Security is offering $1,000 stipends and free airfare to immigrants who deport themselves.

The proposal released on May 5 enhances the department’s previous encouragement to immigrants without legal authorization to be in the U.S. to announce their intention to leave on the Customs and Border Protection’s CBP Home App.

The department estimates that paying the fee for voluntary deportations would be much less expensive than the current average of $17,121 to arrest, detain and remove immigrants.

“If you are here illegally, self-deportation is the best, safest and most cost-effective way to leave the United States to avoid arrest,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement.

President Donald Trump told reporters May 5 at the White House that courts have made it very difficult to deport immigrants but that he hopes the Supreme Court will eventually side with the administration. Trump said migrants who deport themselves could receive some money, get "a beautiful flight back to where they came from" and have the chance to return to the U.S. if they work hard.

"If they miss that limit, they're going to be taken out of our country," Trump said in the Oval Office. "And they will never get a path to come back in. And it will be a much tougher process."

An incentive is that migrants agreeing to voluntary deportation will be less of a priority for detention and removal ahead of their planned departures, the Homeland Security department said, adding that participation in the program may preserve the option for a migrant to re-enter the U.S. legally in the future.

"And if they make it, we're going to work with them so that maybe someday, with a little work, they can come back in, if they're good people, if they're the kind of people that we want in our [country], industrious people that could love our country," Trump said. "And if they're not, they won't."

The Homeland Security department said that the offer of travel assistance has already been successful. An immigrant who entered the country without authorization received a ticket for a flight from Chicago to Honduras and more tickets have been booked for others in the coming weeks, the department said.

(This story has been updated with more information.)