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There are an estimated 14 million people living in the U.S. illegally, and only so many ways to find them. Even with ICE’s roughly $28 billion annual budget, even with a massive recruitment campaign and the rapid deployment of Border Patrol, the Trump administration may not be able to accomplish its goal of 1 million deportations every year. So the administration has started to lean more heavily on a different strategy: asking migrants outright to leave voluntarily. The Department of Homeland Security launched a $200 million advertising campaign explicitly urging migrants to “self-deport.” “Do what’s right,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said. “Leave now.” More recently, Donald Trump called on social media for “REVERSE MIGRATION,” and later clarified that he wanted to “get ’em out of here; I want to get ’em out.”

In this episode, we follow one couple as they make a decision: Should they stay and build a life in the U.S., or submit to Noem’s orders and leave? Matt Borowski is an undocumented immigrant from Poland, but he did not tell Maddie Polovick that until their second date. By then, she was already falling in love. They got married five years ago on a mountain peak in Colorado and settled in Chicago, close to her best friend and some of her family. By the time Border Patrol showed up in Chicago this fall, Borowski’s few legal paths to citizenship had dried up. One day, he broached the idea of moving to Poland, and she cursed him out. But he kept bringing it up, because day by day, it was becoming harder to avoid: The place they wanted to make home did not want him. They had to decide.

The following is a transcript of the episode:

Hanna Rosin: Just a quick note: This episode contains some cursing that you may not usually hear on this show. On September 6, President Trump posted a fabricated image on Truth Social of a burning Chicago skyline with helicopters flying overhead. “‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning,’” he wrote, a reference from Apocalypse Now.

[Sounds of protests]

Rosin: A couple of days later, the Department of Homeland Security announced “Operation Midway Blitz.”

TV anchor 1: Operation Midway Blitz will “target the criminal illegal aliens who flocked to Chicago and Illinois—”

TV anchor 2: —agents and demonstrators pushing and shoving outside an ICE facility just outside the city this morning—

TV anchor 3: From tear gas being deployed outside a Logan Square market to an alderperson being handcuffed checking on a man who had been detained and injured.

[Sounds of protests]

Rosin: These types of scenes have since played out all across the country in the pursuit of one ambitious goal: at least a million deportations every year.

But even with ICE’s $28 billion annual budget—the largest for a law enforcement agency in the federal government—it still may not be possible to deport the 14 million or so people who are here illegally.

So maybe these ICE raids aren’t just ends; they are means to something else: to get people to choose to leave voluntarily.

[Music]

Rosin: And there’s more than one way to accomplish that.

There’s the overt way: Make people afraid to go to work or take their kids to school or even leave their homes.

And then there’s a more subtle way, where the constant pressure wears down something that once felt real: this American idea, or maybe hope, that there could be a future here.

Maddie Polovick: People knew what the election meant for us. But I just couldn’t bring myself to say it.

Rosin: Last spring, we met a young couple in Chicago. One’s a U.S. citizen, and the other is undocumented, from Poland.

Matt Borowski: Yeah, honestly, when this started happening, I thought it was only a matter of time before this hits closer to us.

Polovick: Yeah.

Borowski: It was only a matter of time.

Rosin: They may not be the kind of couple that most people think of when it comes to this issue, because they have more choices than most.

But the past year had them asking exactly the question this administration wants them to ask: Is it just better to leave?

Borowski: There are Black Hawk helicopters flying over my head. Apartment complexes are being attacked in the middle of the night. Right now, it does feel like things are kind of just falling apart.

Rosin: For the last several months, we asked them to document how they would make that decision.

Polovick: Today’s our five-year anniversary. (Laughs.)

Rosin: They sent us more than a hundred recordings—

Family member:  Cheers to family.

Family member 2: To family!

Rosin: And more than 40 hours of the life they’ve made.

Polovick: Oh my God. How do you feel? (Laughs.)

Borowski: Whew.

Polovick: (Laughs.)

Polovick: There’s just so many lemons here. At some point, you’re like, Okay, can we make some fucking lemonade?

Borowski: But they’re not lemons.

Polovick: What are they?

Borowski: It’s shit.

Polovick: Okay.

Rosin: And day by day, it was getting harder to hide.

Borowski: I’ve heard reports of ICE being around and sniffing around, but never a raid like this. And now I’m freaking out.

Rosin: I’m Hanna Rosin. This is Radio Atlantic. And this is one snapshot of one couple who are about to make a choice.

Rosin: How did you and Matt meet?

Polovick: We met online, and it was really one of those things, like, as soon as we started talking, as soon as we had our first date, it was like, Okay, there’s something special about this guy.

Rosin: On Maddie Polovick and Matt Borowski’s first date, they went to a restaurant in Chicago known for their Tater Tots.

On their second date, Matt told her that he was undocumented.

[Music]

Rosin: And was your reaction like, Uh-oh, or what was your reaction?

Polovick: (Sighs.) I would say I was taken aback. I think if I knew a little bit more about the situation, the hurdles that he has navigated and would navigate, I think if I would’ve known that, I would’ve been more concerned. But at the time, I was just very like, Huh, okay. It’s enough to give me pause. But I enjoyed his company enough that I was like, Okay!

Rosin: (Laughs.)

Polovick: This is good information.

Rosin: Yeah.

Polovick: I would like to proceed, but—

Rosin: Yeah.

Polovick: Maybe there’s a little bit of hesitation in my brain, but it’s okay. (Laughs.)

Rosin: The more serious things got between them, though, the more questions Maddie had.

Polovick: And at least at that time, ’cause we weren’t talking about leaving America yet, at least, it was like—us staying in America was really the only thing that was on the table, so it was like, Okay, with the immigration stuff in particular, this is going to live with him, and am I okay with that? Am I okay with this becoming my life?

Rosin: For Matt, that life had meant never being able to plan ahead, had meant applying for a job as a teenager and breaking down when the owners found out that he’d lied about his paperwork, and continuing to lie about his paperwork because what other choice did he have?

Matt’s life had always been precarious, which was tolerable when he was alone. But now, there was Maddie.

Borowski:  Can you, for my sake—

Polovick: What?

Borowski: —elaborate on the whole derailing your life thing a little bit more?

Polovick: It was—

Borowski: Because I’m thinking about it again, and I’m thinking about those conversations.

Polovick: Yeah.

Borowski: So I need to be kind of—not reminded, but I almost wanna hear how close we were to not working.

Polovick: We were never close.

Borowski: But you know what I mean when I say that. Like—

Polovick: We were never close. (Sniffles.) I said this before, and I’ll say it again: When I met you and started falling in love with you, it felt like coming home after a really long time of being away.

Borowski: Yeah.

[Music]

Rosin: Maddie and Matt got married five years ago on a mountain peak in Colorado. It was just the two of them. They wore the same clothes that they’d worn on their first date, and they had a picnic of snacks from Trader Joe’s.