Even before President Donald Trump returned to office, illegal aliens were voluntarily departing the U.S. But his inauguration and the subsequent flurry of executive orders appear to have led more to make their way out of the country.

“You know, I think President Trump is doing it a lot with rhetoric and now with the executive orders trying to get things done, and people are now self deporting,” National Border Patrol Council Vice President Art Del Cueto said Tuesday on the “Just the News, No Noise” television show. 

“It started a couple weeks ago,” he also said. “They didn't wait till now. It started a couple weeks ago where they were saying, 'Hey, look, we know the new sheriff is in town. Let's pack up and leave Dodge.' I guess you would say.”

Trump on Monday signed a slew of executive orders to secure the border and shut down the CBP One app, which the Biden Department of Homeland Security had used to process hundreds of thousands of aliens. Video footage showed hundreds of would-be entrants to the country crying at the border in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, after learning that their appointments had been canceled. One woman in particular went viral as footage showed her wailing in disappointment at the news.

Apart from shutting down the app, Trump issued an order terminating so-called “birth tourism” wherein foreigners have children within the U.S. interior to secure citizenship status. The practice presented hurdles for deporting illegal aliens who were the parents of so-called “anchor babies.” He additionally reinstated his “Remain in Mexico” policy requiring that would-be asylum seekers stay in that country while awaiting their immigration court date.

Trump has also promised mass deportations of illegal aliens and tapped former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan to serve as his “border czar” to oversee those actions.

“It’s started. ICE teams are out there as of today,” Homan said Monday on Fox News. “We gave a direction to prioritize public safety threats that we’re looking for.” Prior to taking up the post, Homan predicted that the media would attempt to demonize the Trump administration over its deportation efforts.

“We’re gonna take a lot of hate. We’re goin’ be sued, every time,” he said. “I think you’ll see the left try to control the media. They’re goin’ show the first crying female, first crying child and say how inhumane we are. 

"But they won’t talk about 340,000 children that they failed to take care of. They’re not going to talk about the young women who have been murdered in this country at the hands of criminal cartels … they’ll tell one side of the story. They’ll try to vilify us. But they’re not going to stop us.”

Ahead of Trump’s inauguration, the southern border witnessed an outflow of people who secured entry under President Joe Biden’s tenure, with news outlets pointing to large columns of people marching out of the United States. 

Some departures appeared to come in response to the Trump team’s rhetoric about deportations. Speaking to NewsNation at the time, immigration lawyer Rolando Vasquez suggested that many migrants were leaving voluntarily to avoid deportation to Mexico and to instead return to their home country.

“This is causing many migrants to leave on their own, knowing that they’re either going to be deported to their home country or be deported to Mexico," he said. "The overwhelming majority of them do not want to be in Mexico."

The scale of the departures remain unclear, however, and it is unlikely that a mass self-deportation movement would preempt federal enforcement actions. It may, however, serve to ease the implementation of Trump’s agenda should large numbers of voluntary deportees pave the way.

On Monday, video footage showed authorities blocking access to a border checkpoint at El Paso, Texas, and warning that attempts to cross would result in arrest. Some would-be entrants, however, have refused to leave the border and are demanding that the country honor their appointments through CBP One.

At San Ysidro, California, for instance, roughly 200 migrants remained near the crossing at Tijuana even after the government shut down the app.

“We have been waiting for the appointment for 11 months. We will keep waiting here until we get an appointment,” migrant Erica Ramirez told the New York Post.

On the enforcement side, however, federal agents appear ecstatic with Trump’s policy shifts.

“You know, in the last four years, we've had people that have come into the United States from 168 different countries. Crazy. The message is going to go out there quick,” Del Cueto also said. 

“They're going to realize you can't just come across, ask for asylum and get released,” he continued. 

“So once those numbers drop, they're going to be able to effectively move agents from the processing centers to the areas on the border where you can start arresting a lot of these drug traffickers that are coming into the country. Right? That's huge. So that, right off the bat, is the big domino that has to fall for everything else to fall in place. But the agents are just thrilled.”