By Tim Henderson, Stateline.org

An increasing number of immigrants without legal status — even some who have lived here for decades — are finding it easier to seek opportunities in other countries than to stay in the U.S. amid threats of detention and deportation.

“This has never happened in our country before. We have had periods of voluntary departure, but not self-deportations under pressure like this,” said Muzaffar Chishti, an attorney and policy expert at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

In a June report Chishti wrote for the institute, he said the “self-deportation” strategy by the Trump administration is perhaps an acknowledgement that its goal of 1 million deportations a year “might be impossible through immigration enforcement alone, no matter how muscular.”

Immigration arrests fell in August compared with July and have not been close to a stated administration goal of 3,000 a day.

It’s hard to document how many immigrants might be choosing to leave under pressure from the Trump administration. Thousands have shown a new interest in leaving on social media, in court and through a new government app offering a plane ticket and $1,000 for those without legal immigration status. Trump officials have touted a drop in the immigrant population this year as a sign of success, but researchers say fear of responding to surveys may play a role in the data.

A 22-year-old Oklahoma woman, brought to the U.S. as a child, told Stateline she’s leaving for her native Mexico on a flight this month to start a new life.

Living in Mexico may be hard, but the threat of arrest and detention after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was signed, giving extra funding for immigration enforcement, was too much for her.

“It’s tough. I’m leaving behind an entire life here, everyone I know, everything I’ve ever known. I speak Spanish, but not the best. My thoughts are in English. I have to readapt to everything,” she said.

“More than anything, I’m tired of being called a criminal here,” said the woman, who asked not to be identified by name, fearing interference with her flight.

“I was in leadership in high school. I was in the marching band. I have a college degree here. I am not a criminal, and this is not OK, what’s happening now,” said the woman, who said her parents brought her at the age of 6 on a tourist visa.

She didn’t qualify for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, because her family took her on trips back to Mexico, she said, returning on new tourist visas.

“I am 22 years old now and undocumented,” she said, “I can’t speak to my parents’ actions. I know there’s issues with legality in that and they made choices that were not favorable. I was a child.”

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Discussions abound on Reddit, an online chat site, about whether to take a government offer to leave or continue to face the threat of arrest and detention if not deportation.

“After over 20 years of living here illegally (I was brought here as a toddler) I think now is finally the time to throw in the towel. I simply do not belong in the US nor am I wanted here,” one man, who said he was born in Mexico, wrote this month in a chat group for Mexican expatriates.

“I’ve worked in construction a large part of my adult life so I have some money saved up, but no career,” he added. “I just feel tired of not being able to do anything meaningful with my life here. I can’t get a driver’s license. I have no hope of ever retiring when I grow old and I can’t even get a real job.”

The Trump administration is using a “potent combination of carrots and sticks” to encourage immigrants without legal status to leave, according to the Migration Policy Institute report. High-profile arrests at workplaces, homes, court hearings and even citizenship interviews have “generated intense nervousness” while poor conditions in detention centers and the threat of removal to unknown countries create “a palpable fear of arrest,” the report stated.

The Department of Homeland Security has a cellphone app — called CBP Home — that offers a plane ticket and $1,000 to “illegal aliens” wishing to leave. The department told Stateline, in a statement attributed only to a senior official, that “tens of thousands of illegal aliens have utilized the CBP Home app” but did not provide further detail.

Thousands more people have accepted voluntary departure rather than fight immigration court cases and take a chance on arrest and detention. The Pew Research Center found that the overall immigrant population dropped from a record 53.3 million in January to 51.9 million in June, though the change could be due partly to a heightened fear of responding to surveys among immigrants.

In another sign of increased appetite for leaving the country, a social media group helping such people decide has seen soaring membership.

The group, Onward, was started by three DACA recipients who moved abroad during the first Trump administration. It has seen 10,000 join requests this year, more than triple the interest it’s had previously in its four years of existence, said Jason Hong, a founding member. Hong was born in South Korea, brought to the U.S. as a child, grew up in New Jersey, and has opted to live in Spain. There, he is a legal resident and has an opportunity for Spanish citizenship. U.S. citizenship wasn’t an option under DACA.

“If I want to shoot for citizenship here, I can,” Hong said. “For the time being I want to focus on helping others who are making the same decision.”

Another Onward founder, Monsy Hernández, left South Carolina during the first Trump administration in 2017, settling in Germany.

“I was very traumatized with the discrimination I faced in the United States when my mom was put into one of the ICE detention centers. I just wanted to go somewhere where no one knew that I was Mexican,” Hernández said. “I thought, OK, if I’m in Germany, I will be very, very far away from that discrimination.”

Widespread departure of immigrants is almost unprecedented in the U.S. history, Chishti said, though there was a large-scale return of Italian immigrants in the 19th century. They were known in Italy as“ritornati”— a wave of farmers and laborers who arrived here when work was scarce in their home country, then returned home with their savings after a few years, when economic conditions in Italy improved.

More recently, some people from Mexico returned home when work dried up during the 2008 Great Recession.

But the current departures under pressure and threats from the U.S. government seems to be unprecedented, Chishti said. In some cases, parents have been pressured to leave the country or face separation from their children.

Voluntary departure is also an option to settle immigration court cases, and more people are taking that route. In those cases, immigrants must pay their own way and can’t have a conviction for a serious crime. Choosing voluntary departure can get immigrants released from detention and avoid a removal order that could cause them to be permanently barred from returning.

According to federal statistics obtained by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by Stateline, 6,118 people were granted voluntary departure between Jan. 20 and July 29, the latest figures available, compared with 2,550 for the same time period last year during the Biden administration. For both years, the majority of cases involved citizens of Mexico returning to Mexico.

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By CAROLYN THOMPSON, Associated Press

School is back in session, bringing new routines — and new milestones for students.

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For some, this is the year they are allowed to go home to an empty house instead of an after-school program or day care. It’s a decision faced by many parents whose work or other obligations keep them from coming home until long past school release time.

With after-school care often expensive and hard to find, parents have reason to encourage independence. But how can they be sure their child is ready to navigate home on their own, even if only for an hour or two?

A handful of states have set age minimums. Maryland law, for example, makes it a crime to leave a child younger than 8 years old unattended.

But most states leave it up to parents and guardians. Experts say between 11 and 13 years old can be a good starting point, but stress there’s more to the equation than age. And they say what’s right for one child may not be for another, even within a family.

“It’s not a one-size-fits-all ordeal. And you really have to take it and understand the bigger picture,” said Jaesha Quarrels, director of child care services at Oklahoma Human Services. “Inadequate supervision is a key factor in many preventable childhood injuries and neglect cases.”

Here’s what experts say to consider when deciding whether a child is ready to be home alone:

Consider maturity and skills in addition to age

The American Academy of Pediatrics says most children are not ready to handle emergencies until about age 11 or 12, so the organization generally recommends structured supervision until then.

But it’s not that simple.

Parents often want a specific answer on how old their kids have to be, but age is only one of the factors to consider, said Brian Tessmer, director of treatment and operations at Family Resources, a nonprofit agency in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

“We really strongly encourage parents to look at many other factors because kids, obviously mature at different rates.”

At minimum, children should be able to recite their full name, home address, phone number and the name of a parent, guardian or other emergency contact. They should also know how to reach that person, experts advise.

Other things to consider are whether a child can follow rules, handle routines and keep themselves occupied with homework, toys or electronic devices.

Can they dial the phone? Fix themselves a snack? Do they know where the bandages are if they need one? What if there’s a tornado warning, if they smell something burning or if a carbon monoxide detector goes off? Do they know how and when to dial 911?

They can do it. Do they want to?

Even having all that knowledge doesn’t mean a child is ready to get off the school bus at an unoccupied house, experts said. At a time of high anxiety for American children, there is also emotional readiness to consider.

“Oftentimes as parents, because it’s convenient — we’re busy, we have things that we have to do — we just kind of leave them alone,” Quarrels said. “But we need to consider how the child feels. Are they confident? Can they handle loneliness, fear or boredom?”

Communication is key, Tessmer said.

“It’s a great opportunity to explain to the child that this is a milestone that we’re coming up to as a family, and we’re exploring this opportunity because we do feel like you are getting to a point where you’re ready for this type of trust. We have confidence in you,” he said.

A child home alone should have no doubts about what they’re allowed to do, and even more importantly, not allowed to do, experts said.

Stoves and ovens should be off limits, as well as matches, candles and lighters. Children should be instructed to stay inside, not open the door to anyone unless they’ve been told in advance, and to never reveal that they’re alone on social media, gaming apps or to callers.

“Make sure your house rules are visible and reviewed frequently,” said Quarrels, who recommended having prepackaged snacks or meals handy.

Practice, start slowly and take advantage of technology

To further reduce anxiety, Quarrels recommends role-playing scenarios like handling a doorbell and dialing 911.

And start small, she said. Parents can test the waters by leaving a child inside while they’re in the backyard or taking a walk around the block, she said.

Smartphones and the availability of home security systems that enable real-time monitoring and communication can also put children, and parents, at ease.

“Always check in on a regular basis with your child if you’re going to be gone longer than 15 to 30 minutes,” Tessmer said. “Fortunately, in this age with cellphones and tablets it can be pretty easy. You can have your kids text, you can schedule a quick call, Facetime, send photos to each other to ease any anxieties.”

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By Alex Brown, Stateline.org

As President Donald Trump wages an all-out assault on offshore wind projects, state leaders face a dilemma: Do they pull the plug on offshore wind and look for other ways to meet their fast-growing energy needs? Or do they double down on their investments, in hopes of helping the industry rebound after Trump leaves office?

Many states along the East Coast have been counting on offshore wind to provide a large portion of their electricity needs in the decades ahead. They’ve invested billions of dollars in growing the industry and getting projects off the ground.

But offshore wind has a particular vulnerability: The federal government is the landlord.

Nearly all offshore wind projects are more than 3 miles offshore, in ocean waters managed by federal agencies. That gives Trump a much more direct path to blocking such projects than for onshore wind and solar projects on private lands. Already, he has done more to stymie offshore wind than many observers thought was possible, including an order to stop work on a wind farm off Rhode Island that was nearly complete.

“This is one of the few areas where states are not in full control of their own energy destiny,” said New York state Sen. Andrew Gounardes, a Democrat. “This administration is always looking for leverage points to try to squeeze, and this is a vulnerable one for us.”

State leaders are not yet backing away from their commitments to offshore wind, saying it still has massive long-term potential. But they acknowledge Trump has shown the industry’s vulnerability to political interference, which could scare away investors and developers.

For now, lawmakers say their offshore wind plans have had a massive setback, one that could threaten grid reliability and drive up energy bills. While some state leaders have filed lawsuits challenging Trump’s orders, some say they may need to start looking to other energy sources if offshore wind stalls out.

Since he took office, Trump has halted leases for new wind projects, canceled $679 million in funding to support manufacturing and ports, ended clean energy tax credits and announced plans to cancel the approval of a Maryland offshore wind project.

Most drastically, Trump last month ordered crews to stop work on Revolution Wind, a project off the coast of Rhode Island that is 80% complete. Industry leaders say the order to abandon a nearly finished project was unprecedented. Dozens of turbines already have been erected, with others staged at a nearby pier. More than 50 workers were taken off their planned two-week shift installing new turbines, the CT Mirror reported. One construction crew with about 20 members was left stranded at sea, unable to work, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“This is very much further than was deemed possible or realistic,” said Sam Salustro, senior vice president of policy and market affairs with Oceantic Network, an industry lobbying group. “The self-destruction is beyond our scope of imagination at the beginning of the year.

It’s a massive amount of power that’s just being held back by the federal government.”

State and industry leaders have filed lawsuits seeking to finish work on the Revolution Wind project, arguing Trump has overstepped his authority.

While five East Coast offshore wind farms are in the construction phase, dozens more projects are still in the planning and permitting stages. States have been counting on those projects to power millions of homes, but those plans have hit a dead end with Trump in the White House. What’s less clear is whether the industry can outlast Trump and bounce back after he leaves office.

“[Trump’s actions] are designed to create so much uncertainty and risk that the industry does not rebound under a different administration,” said Timothy Fox, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners LLC, an independent research firm. “Even if a future administration attempts to revive offshore wind development, developers and financiers are likely to be wary of investing in a sector with long lead times and such demonstrable election risks.”

Trump has long opposed offshore wind, repeating false claims that it harms whales, is unreliable and drives up energy costs. His opposition appeared to originate with the construction of an offshore wind farm near his golf course in Scotland, which he deemed an eyesore.

The White House did not respond to a Stateline interview request.

State plans

For many East Coast states, offshore wind has become a critical piece of their energy plans. With limited areas on land that are suited for large-scale energy development, lawmakers have turned to sea-based projects — which also offer the advantage of strong ocean winds. State leaders say such projects could harness massive amounts of power, which is urgently needed as data centers and artificial intelligence drive up electricity demands.

In total, eight East Coast states have committed to building more than 45 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2040 — enough to power more than 30 million homes.

Some states have invested heavily in overhauling ports, building factories and creating workforce development programs to help the industry get on its feet. Officials say the young industry is already creating thousands of manufacturing jobs and reviving coastal economies.

But now that progress has come to a crashing halt.

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The Revolution Wind project in the federal waters off Rhode Island had been expected to provide more than 700 megawatts of electricity starting next year, representing about 2.5% of the power across New England.

Trump’s order to stop work on the Revolution Wind project invoked unspecified “national security interests,” with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum later claiming that undersea drones could escape radar detection by attacking through a wind farm. Offshore wind developers noted that the project already received extensive reviews and approvals from the Department of Defense and other agencies.

Canceling the project could threaten the reliability of the region’s power grid, New England’s grid operator, ISO New England, said in a statement last month.

“I am really concerned that the cancellation or delay of this project could cause a spike in energy market costs and an impact to the reliability of the grid,” Katie Dykes, commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Energy & Environmental Protection, told Stateline. “There aren’t just other projects in the works that can be swapped in.”

Dykes said Trump’s order has made investors hesitant to support other energy projects, given Trump’s attempt to halt Revolution Wind even after years of planning, permitting and construction.

The attorneys general in Connecticut and Rhode Island have joined project developers in suing the Trump administration, hoping to force the completion of the project.

Last week, Burgum said his agency would be “taking a deep look” at the five wind farms already under construction, CNBC reported, blaming an “ideologically driven permitting process” that allowed them to move forward. While threatening those projects, he also said the administration is “under discussion” with the governors of Rhode Island and Connecticut about allowing work to continue on Revolution Wind.

Trump’s administration previously issued a stop-work order in April for the Empire Wind 1 offshore project in New York, but relented the following month and allowed construction to proceed. That reversal appeared to follow a deal with Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul to build a gas pipeline in New York, Politico reported.

But Trump’s refusal to issue new permits has halted other pending projects in New York state, said Gounardes, the state senator, making it impossible for the state to reach its target of 9 gigawatts by 2035. Hochul’s recent push for more nuclear power, he said, is likely a pivot to other forms of energy without carbon emissions.

Not giving up

Meanwhile, Trump’s administration has signaled that it will revoke permits for a Maryland project that has not yet started construction. State leaders in Maryland have committed to building 8.5 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2035. With Trump’s delays, that timeline is now out of reach, said Democratic state Del. Lorig Charkoudian, who authored the law setting that target.

For now, she said, state leaders should focus on building transmission infrastructure, enabling offshore wind to connect to the grid quickly if a new administration enables projects to move forward.

“Nobody’s giving up,” Charkoudian said. “Offshore wind is critical to our energy future. There’s still a lot of work for our states to be doing so we’re ahead of the game when we finally get sanity back in Washington.”

Earlier this month, the Democratic governors of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island issued a joint statement praising the industry’s boost to the manufacturing sector and calling on Trump to uphold federal permits that have been issued for offshore wind projects.

But some state leaders are worried about the industry’s viability.

“[Trump’s actions] could be a massive blow,” said Massachusetts state Sen. Jamie Eldridge, a Democrat who has sponsored legislation to support the deployment of offshore wind. “It will be hard to recover from. It won’t just be, ‘Here’s a Democratic president restoring everything.’”

Industry analysts noted that projects can take nearly a decade to complete. Even under a friendly administration, investors and developers may now be hesitant to sink billions of dollars into projects that can be abruptly canceled if the next president doesn’t like them.

Eldridge said Massachusetts is embracing all forms of renewable energy, including solar and hydropower from Canada. If offshore wind is delayed, he said, leaders may need to focus on energy efficiency and reducing power consumption.

Virginia leaders have committed to building 5.2 gigawatts of offshore wind projects by the end of 2034. That goal will be “desperately hard to meet,” said state Sen. Creigh Deeds, a Democrat who chairs the Commerce and Labor Committee.

“If I were an investor, I would certainly be worried about [the future of offshore wind],” he said.

Deeds said it’s too soon to say whether Virginia will need to adjust its energy planning, especially as it deals with an influx of data centers that are driving up electricity demand. He said lawmakers currently are more focused on Trump’s cuts to food stamps and Medicaid.

While some state leaders say their timelines for offshore wind will now be impossible to meet, none have publicly backed away from their long-term goals.

Industry leaders say there’s much that states can be doing now to help the industry rebound after Trump leaves office.

“If we have to wait the next three years, there’s a lot of work that can be done on the state side,” said Alicia Gené Artessa, director of the New York Offshore Wind Alliance, an industry group.

She called on states to continue building transmission infrastructure to coastal areas and investing in workforce development programs for offshore wind.

Salustro, with the Oceantic Network, noted that many Republicans have embraced offshore wind and the jobs it has created. The current battle over offshore wind is largely driven by “one person’s personality,” he said, giving him hope the industry can outlast Trump.

“The basic economics are going to prevail long term,” he said.

Despite their misgivings, many state lawmakers largely share that view.

“It’s too early to pull the plug on the future of offshore wind,” said Gounardes, the New York senator. “The wind is always going to blow no matter who’s president, and we should be poised to take advantage of that so that when the administration changes, we’re not a decade behind.”

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org.

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The fraud continues at flood stage, with the governor, Tim Walz, and his agency heads expressing no more embarrassment or regret than they might for failing to set the table correctly for a picnic.

Joe Soucheray

“We forgot the mustard, but steps have been taken to prevent forgetting mustard going forward.”

“Ketchup?”

“That too.”

More than $10 million has been fraudulently stolen from Housing Stabilization Services alone, a program developed by the Minnesota Department of Human Services to help people with disabilities in need, many of whom remain in need. We learn this the same week that Walz has made it public that he intends to seek an unprecedented third term in a row. It is perversely fascinating that Walz can receive a new report of fraud under his watch and then excuse himself to go play Regular Guy by patting the fender of his prop International Scout for a new campaign ad.

Mostly, Walz’s agency heads – he hired them – conveniently got a sail full of wind and disappeared when the going got too fraudy. Heather Mueller was the Department of Education commissioner, but when the food fraudsters claimed they were feeding 6,000 kids a day from a grimy storefront the size of her waiting room, she vanished.

Jodi Harpstead was commissioner of Human Services, but her agency was gushing money from a fire hose of fraud, autism care, day care, Medicaid, housing stabilization, and she vamoosed in February of this year, replaced by Shireen Gandhi.

Gandhi is a veteran of DHS and was for many years the budgeting and financial chief of the outfit. Gandhi has been visible and usually available for the cameras, offering nothing of substance except vowing not to forget the condiments the next time.

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Some of Walz’s people are unlucky. Eric Grumdahl, an assistant commissioner in DHS whose responsibilities apparently included Housing Stabilization Services, apparently was fired, making him probably the first employee in the long Walz tenure of fraud to actually suffer a consequence.

In fact, Grumdahl was fired this past Tuesday, one day before DHS was to appear before the new Fraud Prevention Committee of the Minnesota House of Representatives. To Grumdahl’s presumed regret, he didn’t catch a gust and sail away like the others but is conveniently unavailable nonetheless.

“This is yet another example of DHS and the Walz administration dodging accountability for their failures,” Rep. Kristin Robbins, R-Maple Grove, the fraud committee’s chair, was quoted saying by Alpha News. “I would have expected Assistant Commissioner Grumdahl to attend the hearing and answer questions today, but DHS never intended for him to come.”

Having never stolen anything of taxpayer consequence, a pack of chewing gum once and a car tire, I can only offer an amateur’s theory on what happened to this once functioning state. COVID hit. Americans were essentially told to shut everything down. Stay at home. Don’t go to work. For God’s sake, don’t patronize a restaurant or small business. The government pumped money into new programs to make up for losses in services and income. It became a perfect storm of incompetent governments flush with cash. When fraudsters realized they could get money by claiming to feed children, they were on that like ants on spilled sugar. New scams developed overnight, all seemingly competing to top the food fraud scam, which is nearly at $250 million stolen and the trials not near completion. It was as hedonistic as lighting cigars with $100 bills. The U.S. attorney has estimated the total amount of fraud under investigation could total $1 billion.

Are our government employees in on it? Are they crooks, too? Does it go to the top? Probably not, although, gratefully, we are fated to find out because acting U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson is just getting warmed up. It’s more likely that our worthies were overmatched, bamboozled, tricked, conned, duped, bilked, fleeced, swindled and hoodwinked. If they were hockey players, the fraudsters undressed them with the spin-o-rama move.

And the impossibly obtuse man in charge actually believes he deserves a third turn.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic’’ podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.