Trump wants migrants gone, but when this Venezuelan mom tried to leave voluntarily for weeks, his own government left her stranded at the gate

Yelitza Perez, a 29-year-old Venezuelan mother of two, wanted to leave the United States on her own terms. Her husband had already been deported to Venezuela earlier this year. She did not want to wait for immigration agents to come for her and her children. So she tried to do the right thing, at least by the Trump administration’s own standards, and leave voluntarily. What followed was weeks of confusion, silence, and a humiliating rejection at the airport gate.

Through the CBP Home app, the government offers undocumented migrants up to $3,000, a free flight home, and forgiveness of certain fines if they agree to leave voluntarily. The Department of Homeland Security has claimed that between 1.9 million and 2.2 million undocumented immigrants have self-deported since January 2025. The program has been promoted heavily.

But when Perez tried to use that very system, she got nothing. According to CBS News, she registered with the CBP Home app to signal her intent to leave, but she said that she “never received a concrete response or information about the best way to leave the country.” In March, she took her one-year-old daughter, Ixchel, and nine-year-old daughter Paola to Miami International Airport to board a flight to Venezuela. She was turned away at the gate. 

The system says leave, then makes it nearly impossible to do so

The reason: she did not have a Venezuelan government-issued safe pass, a document that Venezuelan nationals without a valid passport need in order to board a flight back home. Perez had surrendered her passport when she crossed the southern border five years ago, a common practice among migrants entering the US at the time.

The safe pass, known in Spanish as a salvoconducto, is issued by Venezuelan consulates. Getting one has proven extremely difficult for many Venezuelans in the US, largely because diplomatic ties between Washington and Caracas have been limited for years, leaving migrants without easy access to functioning consulates.

Perez’s husband eventually helped her obtain the document from Venezuela. She returned to the airport over the weekend and this time was able to board the flight. “Thank you, God,” she said in a video she sent to CBS News while boarding the plane.

Her story is not unique. More than 600,000 Venezuelans entered the US during the Biden administration, most of them granted Temporary Protected Status due to the crisis under Nicolas Maduro’s government. The Trump administration has since terminated that status and ramped up enforcement, pushing many Venezuelans to consider going back. But the rapid shift in policy has created a bureaucratic mess that traps people who actually want to leave.

The government’s own internal numbers tell a complicated story. An internal DHS document reviewed by CNN found that only about 72,000 migrants had actually used the self-deportation program and received stipends, and more than half of those were already in ICE detention. The Center for Migration Studies puts the real number of genuine voluntary departures at around 200,000, roughly one-tenth of what DHS claims publicly.

Perez said she was not alone in being stuck in limbo. “There are many Venezuelans in limbo,” she told CBS News. For a program the government has spent $200 million advertising, her weeks-long ordeal raises a straightforward question: if the administration truly wants migrants to leave, why is it so hard for those who are willing?

Meanwhile, the US and Venezuela continue to navigate a complicated relationship, including a recent $500 million Venezuelan oil deal that has raised its own set of questions about where American priorities truly lie.