Self-deportation alone is not going to solve America’s illegal alien problem, but it can help, and even the media’s getting around to reporting on it.

Celeste traveled from Peru to the U.S. two decades ago, then a young woman of 19, and overstayed her tourist visa… So, Celeste has made a tough decision: She will continue cleaning offices and saving money for just a few more months, and return to Peru by year’s end.

About 100 miles southeast, Maria, also an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, said that after 30 years in the Coachella Valley, she, too, plans to return to her home country and try to forge a new life in the western state of Michoacán.

Luz Gallegos, executive director of TODEC Legal Center in the Inland Empire, said her staff members talk “daily” with folks who are considering leaving. “What comes up a lot in the sessions is, ‘Prefiero irme con algo, que irme sin nada,’” Gallegos said. “I’d rather leave with something than leave with nothing.”

But more accurately, many of these people never really left Mexico. They function more like guest workers, which, thanks to California’s pro-illegal alien system, allows them endless welfare benefits.

Elena, an unauthorized Mexican immigrant who has lived in the Inland Empire for nearly two decades, said she and her husband are among those who have decided to self-deport. They will move back to their homeland in the southern state of Chiapas by Christmas… in Chiapas, they have nearly five acres of land, where they hope to build a ranch, raise animals and grow crops.

“Many people have said that maybe I will feel more free there,” she said from the kitchen of her tidy home, “because here you feel chained up. You want to do many things, but you can’t.”

Mexico. Land of the free. If they have five acres of land, it’s likely they’ve been going back and forth for a while. Now they’re going home.

Over to NYC.

A Colombian mother of a ninth grader had planned to move her family out of their Brooklyn migrant shelter at the end of the school year.

That was before she got a menacing email from Customs and Border Patrol last week telling her she had seven days to leave the country.

“A fear enters you,” she said in Spanish. “I’m leaving once and for all with my family, before it gets any uglier here.”

She and her family packed their bags and left Wednesday, intending to make their way to Canada to reunite with family members there.

But the hedge here comes from the anchor babies.

Sitting at her kitchen table in Durham, N.C., a woman who goes by “S.” lets out a deep sigh, recalling the first few days of the second Trump administration.

Both S. and her husband are immigrants without legal status in the U.S., which is why she’s asked NPR to withhold her full name. Their two children are U.S. citizens.

They haven’t reached a decision yet. But they said they started hearing about other Latino parents in their community getting children their U.S. passports — so in case they leave, the kids can later return. S. and her husband decided to do the same.

…a woman named Melina walked by: a Mexican woman, also without legal status in the U.S. — she asked that her last name be withheld. She mentioned she’d gotten her children their passports and is hoping to leave soon.

Pastor Julie Contreras, who created the food bank in Waukegan, said she’s been hearing from so many parishioners considering self-deportation, she’s planning on holding information sessions about how to get your U.S.-born children their passports.

That has to be the next step. Children born to illegal parents cannot be considered legal let alone citizens.