By TODD BENSMAN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
Published: 08:51 EST, 10 December 2024 | Updated: 08:55 EST, 10 December 2024
President-elect Donald Trump won’t take office for another five weeks, but his election is already causing a sea change in America’s illegal immigration crisis.
In sprawling migrant camps across Mexico City, people are giving up their plans to cross into the United States and are instead planning to settle in Mexico or begin the long trek back home.
‘I’m just going to give up and go back to Venezuela,’ said a woman in one of the squalid encampments, where thousands of migrants have constructed tents with tarps and scrap material.
‘I have children to take care of,’ she added. ‘I’ll just go back because, with Donald Trump, it’s going to be too hard.’
This is a cruel reality for millions of people drawn to Mexico by the Biden administration’s indulgent border policies – only to find that Americans overwhelmingly rejected the misguided approach in the 2024 election.
The young mother of two had hoped to have already entered the US through President Joe Biden‘s ‘humanitarian parole’ program known as CBP One.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has reported that, since January 2023, the federal initiative has allowed entry into the US for 771,000 migrants, at a rate of about 1,600 people a day. But that program was also quickly overwhelmed by the volume of requests resulting in a massive backlog.
Now, the Trump transition team says the program will end on Day One of the new administration.
In sprawling migrant camps across Mexico City, people are giving up their plans to cross into the United States and are instead planning to settle in Mexico or begin the long trek back home.
This is a cruel reality for millions of people drawn to Mexico by the Biden administration’s indulgent border policies – only to find that Americans overwhelmingly rejected the misguided approach in the 2024 election.
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‘I think they’re eliminating CBP One, so I’m thinking right now of returning to Venezuela,’ said a man, who has been living in a makeshift tent of streets of Mexico City for eight months. ‘I’m just staying here until January 20 to see if I get [a CBP One appointment] and, if not, go back home.’
To the Trump team, these prospective ‘self-deportation’ cases offer some proof that the President-elect’s border security plan may already be working as intended.
Now, they hope word of this deterrent effect will spread to the home cities, towns and villages of potential future migrants and dissuade them from making the dangerous trip.
Others interviewed said they plan to find work and live inside Mexico rather than return to their even more impoverished home countries.
‘I’m going to stay here,’ said a young Colombian man wearing a red, yellow and white shirt who’d travelled with his wife through the perilous jungle between Colombia and Panama.
He says he is loath to give up now after spending thousands of dollars to smugglers to get him this far. His wife agrees.
‘We went through the trouble and expense of traveling through the Darien Gap. I’ll look for asylum here in Mexico,’ she said. ‘As soon as I have a job with work to do, it’ll be fine.’
A migrant from Angola in central Africa said there’s no turning back for him either; the journey home would be too difficult and expensive.
‘I’m going to stay here,’ said a young Colombian man wearing a red, yellow and white shirt who’d travelled with his wife through the perilous jungle between Colombia and Panama.
A migrant from Angola (above) in Central Africa said there’s no turning back for him either; the journey home would be too difficult and expensive.
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‘It is not my main goal to stay here in Mexico,’ he said in broken Spanish. ‘But if it just happens, you know, I’m going to stay here.’
Trump has also threatened Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, that the U.S. will impose debilitating 25 percent trade tariffs on her country if she does not dispatch Mexican military and immigration services to end the flow of migrants north.
The Mexicans now routinely capture migrants and transport them south to the Mexican cities of Tapachula and Villahermosa along the Guatemalan border.
The US currently estimates about 1,600 illegal border crossings daily. That’s down from the peak of 14,000 in a single day just one year ago.
Indeed, Mexico began this program earlier in 2024 at the urging of the Biden administration, but the Trump tariff threat has reenergized the operation in some regions.
‘The Mexicans don’t want us to go farther. They want us to go back. That’s why I’m staying in Mexico City,’ a migrant named Josmer told me.
A third anticipated Trump policy also appears to be having a deterrent effect – the President-elect’s promise to begin the ‘greatest mass deportation in American history.’
Trump reiterated those plans in an interview with NBC News this weekend.
‘We’re starting with the criminals and we’ve got to do it,’ Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker. ‘And then we’re starting with the others and we’re going to see how it goes.’
‘The Mexicans don’t want us to go farther. They want us to go back. That’s why I’m staying in Mexico City,’ a migrant named Josmer told me.
That message is apparently being received loud and clear in Mexico City.
‘He says he’s going to kick all the illegal people out of the country,’ another young mother said, as she prepared a pot of pulled chicken for dinner. She conceded, there’s ‘no point’ in trying to enter the U.S. illegally.
Not all of the migrants that I spoke to said they’d leave immediately.
At least one young Venezuelan told me that he’ll never stop trying to sneak into the US after working for six months as a barber in one of the camps.
‘We’re going to keep trying, you know, just climb the walls,’ he said. ‘[Trump] says that we’re going to get deported, but we’re going to try it again.’
