“Voluntary Agreement”
—With a Gun Held to Their Heads

May 10, 2026

In March, 9,000 immigrants “volunteered” to “self deport”—in other words, return to the country from whence they came.

Things haven’t improved in those countries. U.S. capital still dominates their economies. Gangs still roam working class neighborhoods in Haiti, putting everyone’s life at risk. Civil war continues to rage in Sudan, after more than a decade. Ukraine is still beset by war. Countries like Guatemala, where some migrants come from, still have 7-year-old children working in the fields.

Many of the people agreeing to “self deport” have roots in the U.S., having worked here for years. Some know no other family than the brothers, sisters, and children they have here.

Some asking to leave have a claim for “humanitarian” protection, because they could be killed where they come from, having led strikes, for example, or taking part in demonstrations against a military dictatorship.

Almost all of them were picked up in one of the dragnets carried out by ICE, which grabbed them off the street as they dropped their kids at school, or which raided their workplace. The largest share of them—over 70%—have no criminal record of any kind. They just happened to be in ICE’s crosshairs one day.

Ever since that day, they sit in detention centers, waiting for their cases to be heard.

What does it say about the conditions they are being held under in the U.S.A. that they now “volunteer” to go back?

Many of the detention centers are housed in old prisons, like Leavenworth in Kansas, or North Lake in Michigan. Some have been set up in mammoth field houses, or tents, some in old warehouses. But regardless of the kind of facility, they are wretched hellholes.

Congress has documented over 1,000 reports about unsafe and dangerous conditions, filthy and unsanitary dining spaces, lack of working toilet facilities, spoiled food, lack of medical care for severely ill or injured people, unfilled prescriptions for vital medicines—plus violent abuse of those who complain. A woman breast-feeding at one facility had her infant snatched away from her.

Since Trump took office, 44 people died in one of these detention centers, 31 in 2025, another 13 so far in the first three months of 2026. They did not die of old age, but of severe mistreatment.

Many of those big centers are run by private, for-profit prison companies. Given the logic of capitalism, worse conditions mean better profit.

In July 2025, Todd Lyons, ICE’s Acting Director, issued a memo declaring that “illegal” immigrants should no longer be allowed bond, while they are waiting to present their case in an immigration court. With the average wait for a hearing now hitting four years, most people could expect to be locked up indefinitely, under intolerable conditions.

The Migration Policy Institute said: “People are being coerced to volunteer to leave, even when they have potentially a lawful right to stay.”

It’s extortion—pure-and-simple extortion. But it’s also part of a terrorist policy carried out by the U.S. government. It did not start with Trump.

Trump, in fact, has not carried out more expulsions of immigrants than Biden did. Trump uses the same private prison companies that Biden did—just more of them. The long waiting period to even get a hearing goes back to Biden’s administration. What is different with Trump is that everything is done as a violent public spectacle.

The same number of immigrants is expelled, but Trump publicizes the expulsions, aiming it at all the others who remain. Trump might as well come right out and say it: “Work hard and shut up.”

The ICE roundups and the detention centers are threats aimed at the 15 million immigrants without papers—and at tens of millions more who are perfectly legal. In reality, they are aimed at everyone who works here: immigrant or native-born, brown, black or white, woman or man.

Guns targeting one part of the working class will turn their fire on the whole working class.