‘No hope’: More Georgia immigrants voluntarily leave as detention increases

In March, an alleged traffic infraction while leaving a Carroll County renovation job landed Heber Ovando in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. According to Bailey Espinoza, Ovando’s wife, it was a setback that left the family with no good options.

Trying to challenge Ovando’s deportation in immigration court could rack up thousands of dollars in legal fees and leave Ovando stuck inside the Stewart Detention Center for an indefinite period. Instead, the family thought it preferable for Ovando to return to his native Guatemala, despite the thousands of miles that would put between him and the couple’s two daughters, Espinoza explained.

So Ovando opted for a legal maneuver known as “voluntary departure,” in which immigrants facing deportation proceedings agree to leave the country on their own. A judge granted the request in April, according to a court document reviewed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

In recent months, a surging number of people in Georgia have stopped fighting their deportation cases and left the country via voluntary departure, immigration court data shows. It’s a trend that reflects growing hopelessness inside the local immigrant population, attorneys and advocates say. That hopelessness is being driven, they note, by the Trump administration’s expanded use of immigrant detention and a decline in bonds being granted to those with pending cases.

Any detention-related deterrent to fighting deportation cases is hard felt in Georgia, home to some of the country’s busiest ICE lockups.

And if detainees were to stick out a time-consuming legal challenge to their deportations, their cases eventually come before a Georgia immigration court, where asylum is granted at rates among the lowest in the country, according to immigration court data obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research institute at Syracuse University.

So, many are simply choosing to leave, advocates said.

“We’re seeing voluntary departure spike in places where there’s no hope,” said Carmen Maria Rey Caldas, who served as a judge in the immigration court located inside Stewart Detention Center from 2022 to 2025. “These are the places where folks know that they’re just unlikely to — even if they have a good case, even if they have an attorney — it is very possible that they’re going to lose their case anyway.”

A benefit of voluntary departure is it carries reduced legal penalties compared to a formal deportation, making a future, lawful return to the U.S. less difficult.

“It’s a deportation, but it’s not considered a quote unquote deportation,” Espinoza said. “God knows how long (Ovando) could have stayed inside” ICE detention if he hadn’t been granted voluntary departure.

In just the first six months of 2026, more than 6,000 deportation cases in Georgia ended in voluntary departure, up from roughly 1,800 in all of 2025 and 281 in 2024, according to immigration court data analyzed by TRAC.

Georgia is a national leader in voluntary departure cases this year, trailing only Texas (over 17,900 cases) and Louisiana (roughly 7,250). And the Peach State is ahead of states with larger immigrant populations and more people facing deportation, including California, Florida and New York.

The Department of Homeland Security did not address questions from the AJC about increases in voluntary departure cases.

More beds, more volunteers

The states with more extensive immigrant detention infrastructure account for more cases of voluntary departure.

As of July 9, Georgia registered the fourth-largest detained immigrant population in the country (over 4,550 detainees), behind only Texas (16,450), Louisiana (7,680) and California (6,412), according to ICE data compiled by TRAC.

Out of all the immigrants in Georgia who were put in deportation proceedings in 2026, more than 40% spent time in ICE detention, compared with less than 23% nationwide, per federal data shared by TRAC.

“Across the board, there are people who just feel really hopeless in detention,” said Jesse Calmes, an Atlanta-based immigration attorney.

According to Helen Parsonage, a North Carolina immigration attorney who represents people in Georgia ICE detention, longer stays in confinement under Trump are fueling voluntary departure.

“Some folks are willing to stick it out because what is facing them (in their home country) is so much worse,” she said. “But there’s a lot of people who, if bond is denied, then I’m having to tell them: ‘You could sit here (in detention) for six to eight months’” before their case is resolved.

Long stretches in detention wear down people’s resolve and push them toward voluntary departure, which is a “very deliberate policy” by the Trump administration, Parsonage said.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond when asked about the causes of increased voluntary departures in Georgia, or whether it views that trend positively. Instead, it touted what the agency describes as record numbers of self-deportations since January, and noted that “being in detention is a choice.”

“You do not need to turn yourself in to an ICE office if you intend to self-deport,” the ICE website says. “You may simply leave the country. If ICE arrests you because you didn’t turn yourself in, the agency will detain and remove you — and you may have to spend several months in detention while you’re awaiting removal.”

As the population inside ICE lockups in Georgia and across the country has swelled, the number of immigrant deaths in custody has also risen to new record levels. Conditions inside the state’s ICE facilities have been routinely criticized by immigrants, advocates and Democratic lawmakers.

In the past, detainees with no criminal records and extensive community ties were routinely granted bonds so they could wait at home while their cases proceeded through immigration court. Now, bonds are being routinely denied.

Attorneys say that even clients with good cases against deportation sometimes indicate they’d rather avoid a lengthy process and leave detention via voluntary departure.

Surging voluntary departures are “a direct result of the increased percentage of bond denials,” Calmes said.

Unlike voluntary departure, self-deportation does not protect immigrants from receiving what is known as a final order of removal, which makes future return to the U.S. more complicated.

‘They play with you’

Voluntary departure is generally not available to immigrants with criminal backgrounds or to people who were initially apprehended at the border, per federal guidelines.

Eligible immigrants can be granted voluntary departure by immigration judges or by federal immigration authorities directly.

Rey Caldas said that, as a judge at the Stewart Detention Center immigration court, she offered voluntary departure when it was evident that the immigrants before her did not have a solid case against deportation. As an example, she mentioned individuals who said they feared persecution in their homelands should they be deported, but had never suffered any harm previously.

Historically, another upside of voluntary departure is that it allowed immigrants to return to their homelands on commercial flights — a more dignified alternative to being deported by ICE, according to Carolina Antonini, a Buford Highway immigration lawyer.

Deportation flights “are uncomfortable; they’re full of detainees; you’re tied up the whole time; you’re treated poorly,” she said. “And then when you land, it’s a walk of shame, and people want to avoid that.”