Donald Trump’s latest immigration proposal—offering $1,000 to illegal immigrants who agree to “self-deport” — is not a policy. It’s propaganda, theatrically packaged for campaign headlines and cable news chyron bait. And the terms? You only get paid after you leave.
First the disappearance, then — maybe — the check.
What he’s pitching isn’t new. It’s just familiar in the worst possible way. In the early years of Nazi Germany, officials encouraged “voluntary” emigration of Jews and other targeted groups — polite nudges toward the exits before the trains started running on time. The language was gentler. The outcomes were not.
And now we ask: Where are these people expected to go? There are no clear terms, no logistical assurances. If someone signs up, what prevents them from being funneled into a detention complex like El Salvador’s CECOT — an authoritarian mega – prison where human rights vanish into concrete and shadows?
This is not immigration reform. It is the normalization of vanishing people. Disappearance as national policy, subsidized by taxpayers and marketed like a travel incentive.
Americans cannot afford to look away. Because if history teaches us anything, it’s this: when a government starts offering money to erase people, it’s only a matter of time before the cost becomes collective.