Voluntary departures hit record high as detained immigrants lose hope

As paths to freedom narrow in U.S. immigration courts, record numbers of detainees are abandoning their cases and voluntarily leaving the country.

Last year, 28 percent of deportation cases for people in custody ended in voluntary departure, a higher proportion than any previous year, according to a CBS News analysis of decades of court records.

That figure appears only to rise as the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown expands and detained populations increase. The percentage of voluntary departures among those detained increased in almost every month of 2025, reaching 38% in December. The analysis does not include those who have not been heard by an immigration judge, such as immigrants facing expedited deportation proceedings.

“It is expected that every person detained will get to the point where they are emotionally exhausted because of the way we are treated, and they will just say, ‘OK, all I want is my freedom,’” said Vilma Palacios, who agreed to return to Honduras in late December after being detained for six months in Basile, Louisiana.

Palacios, 22, had lived in the United States since he was 6 years old. Last June, a month after she graduated from Louisiana State University with a nursing degree, ICE agents arrested her at a local police station after she brought a car in for a routine inspection. She has no criminal record.

Palacios said she and her family were apprehended and detained for a month at the border upon arrival in 2010, but were released and sought asylum in the years that followed. Court records show her case was administratively dismissed in 2015, when she was 12, meaning she was removed from the docket indefinitely.

In a statement to CBS News, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson wrote that Palacios “freely admitted to being in the United States illegally” and “never sought or obtained legal status.”

Palacios rejected claims she never applied for legal status, saying she was waiting for her work permit to be renewed when she was arrested.

Since then, Palacios says she has had an immigration attorney help her through the immigration court process and believes she is doing everything necessary to remain in the United States legally. She said she was shocked when immigration officers stopped her.

She said her six-month stay in detention – during which she had no contact with family or friends – was emotionally draining.

“Everything was taken away from me, like being separated from everyone I loved and being surrounded by people I had never met in my life, and [ICE] Having control over every movement that I made was just something that was very difficult for me,” she said. “I got to the point where I didn’t understand that I had no choice but to just say, OK, please give me my freedom back.”

Palacios said she tried to offer medical care to her fellow inmates in need when they faced delays in accessing doctors and nurses, but detention center staff told her not to do so.

“A lot of women would always come to me, or to the police, and complain about the waiting time, that they weren’t getting the treatment they needed, that they were sick and still had to wait two, three, four weeks, even months, to be called,” Palacios said.

About 73,000 people were being held in ICE custody as of mid-January, the highest level ever recorded by DHS, CBS News previously reported.

“Conditions in detention centers have never been worse because they are overcrowded,” said Jen Grant, supervising attorney at the Legal Aid Society of New York.

Palacios asked an immigration judge for bond for his release, but his request was denied.

“They weren’t looking at the roots I had created in the United States,” Palacios said. “The job I had planned, the career, the life I had built for myself, they never took anything into consideration.”

She is not the only one to have had difficulty leaving detention while her case was ongoing. Last year, 30% of bail decisions favored inmates, compared to 59% in 2024, according to the CBS News analysis.

Under the Trump administration, DHS moved to subject anyone who entered the United States illegally to mandatory detention, rather than just those apprehended near the border, effectively removing the power of judges to grant bail. In December, a California district judge ruled that DHS’s widespread use of mandatory detention was unlawful, but the chief immigration judge issued guidance telling immigration judges that the ruling was not binding, according to a memo obtained by the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Judges may also be afraid of ruling at odds with the administration’s deportation agenda, Grant said, as the Trump administration has fired dozens of judges.

A spokesperson for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees the nation’s immigration courts, wrote in a statement that “immigration judges are independent arbiters and decide all matters before them, including requests for voluntary departure, on a case-by-case basis in accordance with U.S. immigration law, regulations and previous decisions.”

DHS did not respond to requests for information about the increase in voluntary departures and the use of mandatory detention.

Many detainees seek release by filing habeas corpus petitions in federal court, which requires a judge to evaluate the legality of their detention. In some cases, the burden of proof falls on the government to demonstrate that a detainee poses a flight risk. But not everyone has the resources to file a habeas corpus petition, Grant said, and not all petitions are successful.

An immigrant who asked CBS News to identify her only by her initials, UG, while she still seeks legal avenues to appeal her deportation, was relieved when a judge finally ordered her deportation after 13 months in detention. Although she did not request her voluntary departure, she at one point tried to convince her legal team to request her dismissal.

“I couldn’t imagine continuing to sit there,” she said. “Every day I sit here, I choose to sit here. I can sign and ask them to remove me in three days.”

Even if her request for relief had been granted, she thought DHS would appeal, leaving her in detention even longer, or try to send her to a country other than her native Mexico, she said.

“They think their chances of winning their case are much lower than they’ve ever been,” attorney Christopher Kinnison said of some of his clients. He has worked as an immigration attorney in Louisiana for 15 years.

Many people facing removal proceedings are seeking asylum, and asylum grant rates have fallen, according to immigration court data analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. More than half of asylum applications were granted each month from 2022 to 2024, but 29% were granted in December 2025.

In recent months, DHS has also decided to cut short thousands of asylum cases by asking judges to send asylum seekers to third country.

“People have no hope,” Grant said. “It’s seeing other people in court arguing their case, having their case dismissed, having bail hearings…and then being denied.”

After a judge granted Palacios’ request for voluntary departure, she was flown to Honduras in handcuffs, with additional metal chains around her waist and feet.

“It’s something that I find very inhumane, the way we are chained and brought into our country,” she said. “It doesn’t appear that this is a voluntary departure. It appears that you are still being held as a criminal, much like a hostage.”

Now in a country she barely remembers, Palacios begins to rebuild her life, even going so far as to volunteer at a local toy drive in her new community.

Pacios did not appeal her case after being sent back to Honduras, but she told CBS News she has not given up hope of one day returning to the United States.

“My goal and dream remains to be a nurse in the United States,” Palacios said. “If I have the opportunity here, to be able to gain experience, in the meantime, to be able to continue to make an impact… to be able to help those who need it, I always say, why not?”

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