ICasa del Migrante, a shelter in Ciudad Juárez on the U.S.-Mexico border, is cold and quiet. A group of men playing dominoes, a group of men shooting hoops by themselves, a young couple watching their children play with superhero toys.
“Some people come here and don’t want to go back outside,” said social worker Yvonne Lopez. “They’re scared.”
With Donald Trump’s return to power, there will be major changes to US immigration rules. While border cities like Juarez brace for the possibility of mass deportations, criminal organizations lie in wait to kidnap and extort migrants and offer them a path back across the border. .
In addition to deportations, President Trump also discontinued CBP One, an app used by Mexican migrants to arrange U.S. asylum appointments, forcing asylum seekers to wait in dangerous border cities during their stay. The United States wants to revive the so-called “Remain in Mexico policy,” which was implemented in 2007. Your application has been processed.
The incoming administration also reportedly wants to reinstate Title 42, the pandemic-era public health policy that has deported people nearly 3 million times without allowing them to apply for asylum.
Experts say any of these moves will increase the number of migrants to Mexican border cities. Taken together, the effects can be overwhelming.
But on the eve of Trump’s inauguration, Juarez is strangely calm.
Enrique Serrano, general coordinator of COESPO, a state-level migration agency, said: “Due to lack of information, there is currently no strategy for mass deportation of immigrants from the United States,” adding that it is primarily the government’s prerogative to do so. added. federal government.
“The range of possibilities is very wide. 1,000 people, or 100,000 people, or millions of people could be deported,” he added. “You can’t create a strategy that accommodates every level of expectation. We’re going to wait.”
The system has some slack, with about half of the 2,700 beds in shelters across Juarez empty. This is true across Mexican border cities since CBP One became available elsewhere in Mexico. Meanwhile, authorities are working to contain immigration in the south.
Serrano said the federal government will set up three camps in Juarez if necessary to process deportees before Mexicans can be bused anywhere in the country for free. On the other hand, foreigners “will no longer be able to come and go freely.”
Tijuana, another border city, recently declared a state of emergency over the possibility of mass deportations. Serrano said now is not the time for Juarez to do the same, saying there is “no panic, no emergency.”
Civil society organizations, which provide more than half of Juarez’s shelter capacity, were less optimistic about the future.
“Trump and his team now know what policies work and how to strengthen them,” said Blanca Navarrete, director of Derechos Hunos Integrales en Axión. .
Casa del Migrante is now one-third full of its 560-person capacity, and is building out additional space and stocking up on essentials. At one point in President Trump’s last term, he made room for 1,138 immigrants.
It is also unknown what the exiles want to do. They have left their homes for reasons such as poverty and violence, and it is “delusional” to think they will return soon, Navarrete said.
Serrano said COESPO expects “the vast majority will want to return to the United States.”
“And (criminal groups) will try to capture them as a market for immigration services,” he added.
In early January, authorities discovered a 40-meter tunnel running from Juarez to El Paso, Texas. Advertisements on social media say that for $5,000, you can cheer up migrants under the border wall in 20 minutes. The entrance was in a square near a giant sculpture in the shape of a red “X”.
“The fact that this tunnel was in sight makes you wonder where else there are tunnels,” said Sierra Avila, also of Derechos Hunos Integrales en Axión. spoke.
Mexican organized crime groups are increasingly diversifying into immigrant economies. For some, income from immigration rivals income from drugs.
These groups may tax coyotes or directly smuggle people themselves. However, they also blackmail, kidnap, and sometimes traffick people for sex work and forced labor in the agricultural sector.
This made the migrants’ journey even more violent and frightening.
Criminal groups often kidnap people from bus stops and airports. Authorities discovered a safe house packed with more than 100 migrants. Torture, sexual assault, and murder have been recorded.
Most people who arrive at Casa del Migrante have been kidnapped at some point while traveling through Mexico, Lopez said.
Some traffickers have tried to break into their shelters. “In the past, we’ve had people come in saying they’re family, but when you interview them at the reception desk, you find out that the man isn’t actually the father,” Lopez said.
Lopez said this was a strategy of the traffickers to keep their customers, or victims, under their control. But it also gives them contact with others in the shelter.
“We are trying to protect immigrants as much as we can,” Lopez said. “But maybe someone else was in here and we didn’t notice.”
Organized crime groups will be watching President Trump’s policies closely. “They are aware of the changes in the United States and will use it to their advantage, as they have in the past,” said Insight Crime’s Parker Assmann.
During President Trump’s first term, Remain in Mexico and Title 42 stranded vulnerable populations in border cities, a boon for organized crime.
Now, these groups have increased their appetite for business, which could soon provide them with an even larger population.
President Trump’s immigration policies could end up lining the pockets of organized crime groups and strengthening the very cartels that Trump promised to “make war on.”
“We have repeatedly asked the authorities what they are doing about the kidnappings,” Navarrete said. “The National Guard told us they have a plan, but we haven’t heard anything else.
“So I don’t have a plan.”
