DHS increasing self-deportation stipend from $1,000 to $2,600
DHS is using the CBP Home Mobile App to incentivize self-deportation. (Department of Homeland Security)
(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Homeland Security announced on Wednesday that it is increasing its stipend for those who are in the United States illegally and self-deport by $1,600.
Previously, DHS offered $1,000 to those who use the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Home App to self-deport, but now, it’s raising that number to $2,600.
DHS claimed that since January 2025, 2.2 million people who are in the U.S. illegally have voluntarily self-deported — with “tens of thousands” using the CBP app. A report from the Brookings Institution released last week called DHS’ data into question, saying the department’s numbers “should not be considered a serious source.”
“To celebrate one year of this administration, the U.S. taxpayer is generously increasing the incentive to leave voluntarily for those in this country illegally- offering a $2,600 exit bonus,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a release. “Illegal aliens should take advantage of this gift and self-deport because if they don’t, we will find them, we will arrest them, and they will never return.”
The increased amount is to mark to the first year of President Donald Trump’s term in office, and may only be temporary, DHS said in the release.
For months, the department has been pushing self-deportations — spending millions on advertisements that showcased it’s previous $1,000 payment and a plane ticket that people who register to self-deport are given.
It’s not clear how much money in total has been given to people who have self-deported.
DHS said in the first year of Trump’s term, there were 675,000 deportations. The authors of the Brookings Institution report estimated a figure much lower last week — saying there were between 310,000 and 315,000 removals in 2025.
Deporting migrants who are illegally in the U.S. was one of Trump’s key campaign promises, but advocates have said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol tactics have gone too far in some cases.
Democratic Texas State Rep. James Talarico speaks during a campaign launch rally, September 9, 2025 in Round Rock, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — With just one month until the high-stakes primary election in the Texas U.S. Senate race, Democrats are butting heads, with Democratic State Rep. James Talarico pushing back on allegations that he made controversial remarks about the race of his former opponent.
Talarico on Monday responded to a video from former Rep. Colin Allred, who is running for Texas’ 33rd Congressional District, that Talarico made comments critical of Allred on the basis of race.
On Sunday, a TikTok creator alleged that Talarico, in a private conversation, said that Allred was a “mediocre Black man” and that he would would rather run against Allred than Rep. Jasmine Crockett, whom he allegedly called a “formidable and intelligent Black woman.” The TikTok creator, who had previously supported Talarico, posted that the conversation happened after a town hall in Plano, Texas, in January.
Talarico’s campaign told ABC News that the individual was never a member of the campaign team. Talarico has not denied the conversation took place, but has said it was taken out of context.
Talarico, who is white, is running against Crockett in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. Allred had previously announced a Senate bid, but dropped out of the race to run for the House again, saying Crockett’s entering of the race contributed to his decision.
In a video posted on X Monday afternoon, Allred endorsed Crockett and criticized Talarico for his alleged comments.
Allred claimed that Talarico “had the temerity and the audacity to say to a Black woman that he had signed up to run against a ‘mediocre Black man,’ meaning me, and not a ‘formidable, intelligent Black woman,’ meaning Jasmine Crockett.”
Talarico pushed back on the claims, arguing that the allegations are “a mischaracterization of a private conversation.”
“In my praise of Congresswoman Crockett, I described Congressman Allred’s method of campaigning as mediocre — but his life and service are not. I would never attack him on the basis of race,” Talarico said in a statement posted to X by his spokesperson.
Talarico added that he “understand[s]” how his criticism could be perceived incorrectly “given this country’s painful legacy of racism,” but emphasized his deep “respect” for Allred.
Crockett reacted to the news, thanking Allred for his endorsement and praising him for being “an even-tempered and measured person who doesn’t engage in pettiness” — though she notably did not criticize her opponent or mention him by name.
“It’s unfortunate that at the start of Black History Month, this is what we’re facing. In former Congressman Colin Allred’s video, he drew a line in the sand. He made it clear that he did not take allegations of an attack on him as simply another day in the neighborhood,” Crockett’s spokesperson said in a statement to ABC News.
Earlier Monday, Talarico appeared on ABC’s “The View” and emphasized his “deep love and respect” for Crockett, saying that he will “1,000 percent” support and assist her if she were to become the Democratic nominee over him. The Democratic nominee would face off in November with incumbent Republican John Cornyn or one of his primary challengers, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt.
While the allegations against Talarico were not discussed during his appearance on “The View,” he elaborated on his Senate campaign, calling for the overhaul of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and celebrating recent Democratic wins in Texas.
Reacting to the news of Liam Ramos, the 5-year-old asylum seeker who was released from a Texas detention center on Sunday, Talarico slammed the current tactics being deployed by ICE before demanding an overhaul and reorganization of the agency.
“It’s time to tear down this secret police force and replace it with an agency that is actually going to focus on public safety,” he said on “The View.”
Though Talarico has stopped short of explicitly calling for the abolition of ICE, he has repeatedly expressed a desire to reallocate funding while also maintaining border security.
Over the weekend, Democrats delivered an upset victory in the Texas Senate District 9, where Democrat Taylor Rehmet defeated President Donald Trump-endorsed GOP candidate, Leigh Wambsganss, and flipped the reliably red seat.
When asked about what he would do to win over the voters that Rehmet had flipped, Talarico emphasized that he is “not writing off any voter” or “any community.”
“I’m extending an open hand instead of a closed fist, and in my experience, if you extend that open hand, you’ll be surprised by who takes it,” Talarico said.
Becky Pepper Jackson competes in discus and shot put on the girls high school track and field team in her West Virginia hometown. (ABC News)
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday will for the first time wade into the heated national debate over whether transgender girls should be allowed to participate in girls’ and women’s sports.
The justices will hear arguments in a pair of cases from Idaho and West Virginia, where federal courts have blocked state laws that would prohibit trans girls from participating on teams consistent with their gender identity.
The outcome of the cases will determine the fate of those laws and similar measures in 27 other states. There are an estimated 122,000 transgender American teens who participate in high school sports nationwide, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA Law School.
Lower courts have concluded separately that the bans discriminate “on the basis of sex” in violation of Title IX, the landmark civil rights law that has promoted equal opportunities for women and girls in athletics, and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.
The states are asking the justices to overturn those decisions and reinstate their laws, arguing that sex and gender identity are not synonymous when it comes to women’s athletics and that allowing transgender girls to compete against cisgender girls is unfair and unsafe.
“It really comes down to one simple question,” said West Virginia Attorney General John McCuskey in an interview with ABC News. “Is it legal and constitutional for states to delineate their athletic playing fields based on the immutable physical characteristics that people have that are associated with their sex that’s assigned at birth?”
Becky Pepper Jackson, a high school sophomore from Bridgeport, West Virginia, who competes in discus and shot put on the track and field team, brought the legal challenge to her state’s law in 2021. She is the only known openly trans athlete in West Virginia in any sport.
“Someone has to do it. Someone has to do this for all of us,” Becky, 15, told ABC News in an exclusive interview. “Otherwise these laws and bills are just going to stand.”
Transgender athletes make up just over 1% of the more than 8 million teenage student athletes nationwide, according to the Williams Institute.
Idaho college student Lindsay Hecox, a former track and cross-country runner who was barred from trying out for her school teams, sued over her state’s ban in 2020. Last year, she asked the court to drop her case because she no longer wished to compete in sports and didn’t want to be in the spotlight. However, Idaho fought to keep the case alive.
“Everyone has had the experience of being told, look, you can’t play. You have to sit on the bench, or you can’t make the team. And everyone knows how that feels,” said Sasha Jean Buchert, an attorney with Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ advocacy group involved with the cases.
“That’s what’s happening to transgender kids right now,” Buchert said. “And the scope of [these bans] is absolutely absurd.”
Becky, who has openly identified as a girl since third grade, said she has never undergone male puberty, thanks to puberty-blocking medication, and has no physiological advantage over her peers.
“She has testosterone from her adrenal glands just like every female out there, but that’s the only testosterone she has,” said her mother, Heather Jackson. “She’s actually not the biggest person on her team. There’s people taller than her; there’s people shorter than her. She’s just an average female teenager.”
As a young cross-country runner, Becky was consistently at the back of the pack. More recently, she earned a spot in the state championship for discus and shot put, where she placed third and eighth, respectively.
“I put in time over the summer and after practices just trying to improve my technique and get better,” she said.
Her performance at an eighth grade track meet in 2024 drew protests from other athletes who claimed she made them uncomfortable in the locker room and on the field.
“I just didn’t think it was right,” said Sabrina Shriver, 16, a former discus thrower who refused to compete against Becky at the meet and later quit the sport because of her participation in the league. “It was just, I don’t know, we all just felt uncomfortable and we’re just, we didn’t want any part of it.”
The competitive advantage boys and men have physically over girls and women has been well established in physically demanding sports by medical research and serves as a primary basis for distinctions between the sexes in athletics.
Studies have shown testosterone produced during male puberty does lead to more muscle mass, larger hearts and lungs, greater body height and longer limbs on average for boys and men, according to the American College of Sports Medicine.
Before puberty, however, “sex differences in athletic performance are minimal,” the group says research shows.
A key issue in the West Virginia case is a dispute over whether Becky, 15, possesses an advantage at all, given she has not undergone male puberty, takes estrogen supplements and does not produce high levels of testosterone.
“If [sports leagues] look at the medical records of individuals like the Olympic committee does, testing people — they test for performance enhancing medications or drugs that their athletes take — so if we can look at those levels, let’s look at her levels,” Heather Jackson said.
McCuskey says a testing regimen is just not practicable and that Becky can still compete, but on a boys team. “We have to be able to draw a line here,” he said.
“Becky is bigger and stronger and faster than the females that she’s competing against,” said the attorney general.
He has urged the Supreme Court to stay out of the debate, arguing in a court brief that West Virginia’s law “implicates ‘fierce scientific and policy debates’ that elected legislators are best able to resolve.”
The U.S. Olympic Committee, the NCAA and 29 states ban transgender girls and women from competing on teams consistent with their gender identity. The other 21 states do not have bans, including California and New York, which have laws explicitly allowing trans athletes to compete.
Last year, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority upheld a Tennessee law banning some gender-affirming medical treatments for transgender minors, rejecting claims that the law discriminated “on the basis of sex” and saying that states should have leeway to regulate health care in an area of scientific uncertainty.
In 2020, however, the Court concluded in a landmark decision that a Michigan transgender woman fired by her employer for being transgender was discriminated against “on the basis of sex” under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Justice Neil Gorsuch explained in his majority opinion that her termination was “for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex.”
Becky, Lindsay, and their attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal say the same reasoning should be applied to sports bans.
“There’s been a number of setbacks that we’ve experienced over the last few years in the courts, but I do have a sense of optimism with this case in light of the fact that the legal issues at play here are some of the same issues at play five years ago,” said Buchert, the Lambda Legal attorney.
Notwithstanding the legal arguments, 69% of Americans say transgender girls should only be allowed to play on boys teams, according to a June 2025 Gallup survey.
The Trump administration also supports the exclusion of transgender athletes from sports teams. An executive order signed in February 2025 says “it is the policy of the United States to rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities.”
Becky says, while she understands public opinion, she is unable to “go against who I am.”
“I’ve been a girl forever,” she said, “and playing on the guys’ team is going backwards.”
President Donald Trump has installed plaques underneath the portraits of presidents in the Rose Garden colonnade that detail aspects of their presidencies. ABC News
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump has installed plaques underneath portraits of presidents at the White House, using them to insult and make unfounded claims about some of his predecessors including Joe Biden and Barack Obama — the latest in a series of controversial White House changes under Trump.
The plaques, many of which the White House said Trump penned himself, add to what the president has dubbed the “Presidential Walk of Fame” — a portrait gallery along the West Wing Colonnade — and describe the tenures of former commanders in chief in an overtly political way.
Trump’s most recent predecessors’ plaques read the most editorialized. The permanent signs are stylistically similar to the president’s social media posts, with sporadic capitalizations and punctuation — including many exclamation points.
Under Biden, depicted only by his signature written by the presidential autopen, the plaque includes claims such as “Sleepy Joe Biden was, by far, the worst President in American History,” adding that he took office “as a result of the most corrupt Election ever seen in the United States” and that “Biden oversaw a series of unprecedented disasters that brought our Nation to the brink of destruction.”
Trump also attacked Biden for his economic record, his climate, immigration and foreign policies, including the Afghanistan withdrawal (calling it “among the most humiliating events in American History”). He also said that because of Biden’s “weakness,” Russia invaded Ukraine, and “Hamas terrorists launched the heinous October 7th attack on Israel.”
The plaque also cites what Trump calls Biden’s “severe mental decline, and his unprecedented use of the Autopen.”
Under Obama, Trump wrote: “Barack Hussein Obama was the first Black President, a community organizer, one term Senator from Illinois, and one of the most divisive political figures in American History.”
Obama’s plaque ends with a more false claims that he “spied on the 2016 Presidential Campaign of Donald J. Trump, and presided over the creation of the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, the worst political scandal in American History.”
The plaques also make two references to Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of State and the 2016 Democratic nominee who lost to Trump. Under Obama’s portrait, it says that Hillary Clinton was his “handpicked successor,” and noted that she “would then lose the Presidency to Donald J. Trump.” Under Bill Clinton’s portrait, it says that “President Clinton’s wife, Hillary, lost the Presidency to President Donald J. Trump.”
Obama had no comment about the plaque. ABC News did not receive immediate responses from Biden and the Clintons for comment.
Many of the plaques were “written directly by the President himself,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement about the new decor.
“The plaques are eloquently written descriptions of each President and the legacy they left behind. As a student of history, many were written directly by the President himself,” Leavitt said in the statement.
Trump had teased these bronze plaques during an interview with Fox’s Laura Ingraham in November, saying that each would describe what the respective president did during his tenure.
In addition to the changes he has made to the colonnade, Trump has also altered the White House by paving over the Rose Garden, renovating White House Palm Room that was originally designed by former first lady Jackie Kennedy and connects the front of the White House to the Rose Garden in the back and redesigning the Oval Office. He has added statues around the Rose Garden and added ample gold leafing and decor to the Oval Office.
Most notably, Trump tore down the East Wing of the White House earlier this year, making room for a sweeping, multimillion-dollar ballroom that the president has said will be completed by the end of his term.
