At Mexico's once packed border, few immigrants remain

One of the hard things to overlook on the Mexican side of the border on the eve of President Trump's deadline to impose tariffs on Mexico is that immigrants are gone.

The overflowing shelters, including Ciudad Juárez, Tijuana and Matamoros, which once were some of the busiest sections along the border, now hold only a few families. Parks, hotels and vacant buildings that once were with people from all over the world stand in the sky.

And at the border itself, where immigrants once slept in camps within 30-foot-wall feet, only dusty clothes and shoes, a rolled-up tube of toothpaste and a bottle of water remain.

“It's all over,” said Rev. William Morton, a missionary at Ciudad Juarez Cathedral, who serves free meals to immigrants. “No one can cross.”

Last week, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Christie Noem announced that Customs and the Border Patrol had only been arrested at the southern border on the previous Saturday.

Trump believes in his crackdown on illegal immigration against the surge in numbers, despite his announcement that he will send thousands more combat troops to the border to stop what he calls an invasion.

But Mexico's own move, according to analysts, has had undeniable results last year, restricting migration — not just across the border, but across the nation. In February, the Trump administration said it would suspend the 25% tariff levies on Mexican exports for a month, challenging the government to further reduce fentanyl movement and fentanyl flow across the border.

That advancement puts Mexico in a much stronger negotiating position than when Trump first threatened tariffs during his first term.

“Mexico has newer leverage than it was in 2019,” wrote Ariel G. Ruiz Soto and Andrew Selee, analysts at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. They said Mexican cooperation made it “essential” to the US.

In recent years, the Mexican government has significantly strengthened its migration checks. They established checkpoints along immigration routes, imposed visa restrictions, dispersed immigrant caravans, and stopped bus people from places like Venezuela to reach the US borders, arriving at far corners in southern Mexico. It all significantly reduced the number of border immigrants.

Since last spring, Mexican authorities have arrested more people each month than their American counterparts. Now, the number of borders has fallen with little effort.

“We don't have a big flow of people anymore — they've dropped by 90%,” said Enrique Serrano Escobar, who heads the Chihuahua office responsible for immigration in Juarez, last week.

And the migrants reaching the border are no longer about to enter the United States, shelter operators say.

“They know they can't cross,” Father Morton said in Juarez. “Every hole in the basement, tunnels, holes in the wall, they effectively sealed it. It's much more difficult.”

Empty shelter

In Mexican border cities, the scene of immigration shelters is roughly the same. The table, bunk bed, empty at the time of meal, is unused.

U.S. government data shows that even before Trump took office, the number of people trying to cross the border had fallen dramatically.

Many of the people waiting in the border cities were appointed through CBP One. This is an application that allows people to make asylum appointments with authorities rather than crossing borders, shelter operators say.

After Trump cancelled the app on his first day in office, people would give up a few days later and head south to Mexico City or to the southern border, said Pastor Juan Fiero, pastor of the Good Samaritan Shelter in Ciudad Juarez.

According to the director, only a handful of Venezuelan women and their children remain in the former shelter of Matamoros, where the name has been translated into helping them win.

In Tijuana, the Foundation Youth Movement 2000, a shelter complex within sight of the border wall, once held hundreds of people of all nationalities, and now there are only 55 people.

They are the same people who have been there since Trump took office.

“There were the same number,” Lara said. It includes people from Venezuela, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Colombia and Guatemalan, as well as Mexican immigrants from states that are thought to be at risk, such as Michoacan.

There are no available figures as to how many migrants such as these live in border shelters, hotels, or rental rooms, and how many migrants have given time.

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“I'm going to wait to see if God touches Trump's heart,” said the 26-year-old Venezuela native. At Ciudad Juárez.

Border guards

Last month, in response to Trump's demands, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum sent 10,000 national security guards to the border of 10,000, and hundreds more troops to Sinaloa, the leading human trafficking hub for Fentanyl.

Officials and people working with immigrants have been split over the last month whether hundreds have begun to appear in and around the border cities, but it has affected illegal border intersections.

At the end of the border walls in Tijuana and San Diego, California, the National Guard set up a large tent on the Mexican side in an area called Nido de Las Gailas. It is located about 15 miles from downtown Tijuana and has been used for a long time by Coyote, a smuggler who uses the steep hills and police presence to lead immigrants to California.

Security guards also placed checkpoints on spots up and down the border.

In Tijuana, coalition spokesman for the Defence of Immigrants, Jose Moreno Mena said the presence of security guards is a major deterrent for immigrants, along with the main deterrent for immigrants, along with the mass expulsion of Trump's promise in the US.

“This doesn't mean they won't keep coming,” Moreno said. “Maybe it's just a pause until they see better conditions.”

But in Tamaulipas, where more than 700 security guards arrived at places like Matamoros last month, security guards appear to be uncontrollable, residents say. They appear to be concentrated on bridges to the US, but immigrants are now trying to enter from the desert and other rural areas.

In Ciudad Juárez, where hundreds of security guards were dispatched in early February, troops and soldiers stopped cars to inspect them, searching for tunnels at the border.

“They have test spots on the streets at night,” Father Morton said. “There's more here on the surface to stop fentanyl, but I don't think they know where it is,” he said he mostly stopped a young man driving a car with soup or had a tattoo, creating an environment of “low-intensity conflict.”

The real work of restraining migration is far from Mexico's northern border.

Most immigrants are housed at the southernmost tip of Tapachula, Mexico's southernmost tip. Operators say the shelter, which has recently housed 1,000 people, serves just 100 people. These immigrants are mostly blocked, waiting for visas that allow them to head north and dispersed as they try to form a caravan.

Many people measure their options. Some have asked the Mexican government to deport them on flights to their country.

It's still in Mexico

Immigrants currently sitting at the US border are people who come from places they are generally unable to return.

“They can't go back,” said Rev. Francisco Gonzalez, president of Juarez's shelter network, that we are one for Juarez.

His 12 shelters last week only housed 440 people after being often full of 1,200 in recent years, but those arriving have been staying longer, he said.

Some have begun filling out forms to get asylum in Mexico. Gonzalez said they fear they would be caught and deported if they had no legal status.

“We still have faith and hope that at some point Trump will recover from his madness,” said Jordan Garcia, a former mining worker from Venezuela, who said he, his wife and three daughters spent seven months on a journey to Ciudad Juarez.

At seven months old, Garcia carried the infant Reina Catalaya through a dangerous jungle pass known as the Darien Gap. Now, the family's makeshift home consists of bunk beds in one of Gonzalez's shelters on the outskirts of Ciudad Juárez, covered in a luxurious blanket for privacy.

However, border shelters began to close. Ciudad Juárez had 34 people open in November. By last month, that number had fallen to 29. Shelter operators say they have lost support from international groups such as International Migration Office and UNICEF, which rely on foreign aid frozen under Trump.

Before the new American administration, “There were more people and more support,” said Olivia Santiago Rentería, a volunteer at Juarez, one of the shelters run by We. “Now,” she said, “Everyone here lives with that uncertainty.”

The report was provided by Rocío Gallegos of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Cooperatives from Tijuana. Enrique Lerma of Matamoros. Lucia Trejo from Tapachula.