Latest news with #USMexicoBorder
Fox News
2 days ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Border county Republicans say Trump policies improve security while Democrats cite 'cruelty'
National news constantly highlights the turmoil at the U.S.-Mexico border, but in southern Arizona—where red desert dust swirls and cacti rise like sentinels—the people living closest to the issue face a daily reality shaped by more than headlines. Amid this rugged landscape, a political battle simmers as local leaders grapple with balancing community safety and the broader national immigration debate. Kathleen Winn, chair of the Pima County Republican Party, expressed her dissatisfaction with how federal budgets have been managed over the past four years. Speaking to Fox News Digital, Winn said infrastructure received "millions and millions of dollars" under the Biden administration, alleging that some of those funds were used to "encourage the facilitation of illegal immigration into this country." "That money went unaccounted for, it was infused into the budgets. And so now they're finding that they have to cut programs because they don't have that money anymore," she continued. "We were the front door for the last four years of all kinds of atrocities happening in this country… we're paying a price for it now." In a statement to Fox News Digital, Eric Robbins, chair of the Pima County Democratic Party, sharply criticized what he described as the Trump administration's legacy of cruelty and misinformation on immigration policy. "Arizonans are exhausted by the Trump administration's gaslighting, cruelty, and lies," Robbins said. He accused Republican leaders—both nationally and within Arizona—of profiting from fear, citing what he called a surge in unjustified arrests by "masked, unidentifiable agents" targeting individuals without criminal records. "These agents have reportedly detained mothers en route to buy food, leaving their children alone by the roadside," he said. Robbins further claimed that such tactics have undermined local law enforcement efforts and funneled detainees into what he described as "for-profit detention centers." Labeling these practices as part of a "documented pattern of abuse," Robbins cited allegations, including the harassment of nonprofit workers, increased privatization and militarization at the border, due process violations, and widespread family separations. "This isn't security—it's systemic failure dressed as patriotism," Robbins stated. "Trump is not a patriot. He's a nationalist, and Americans need to recognize that distinction." On the other hand, Jesus Jerez, a member of the Santa Cruz County Republican Committee, echoed Winn's concerns and claimed enforcement had been limited during the last four years. "The last four years, there was no enforcement activity," Jerez told Fox News Digital. "[Agents were] told that you can't arrest anybody, but you give them these papers, and you hold them until someone can take them to be processed and then released." Winn underscored Tucson's importance in the national immigration flow. "Everything that happens at the border in order to get into the innermost regions of the country. [Tucson is] a stopping point once you go into the country," she said. "It erodes the quality of life here because people don't have [financial] means, so crime gets increased, people steal… We are at the effect of whatever is happening at the border." When asked about border security changes under Trump, Winn aligned her view with that of Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). "We're not seeing as many illegal immigrants," she said, although she acknowledged that drug smuggling remains an issue in the region. "Even though human being smuggling has stopped, the drug smuggling has not. And there's a huge network set up in Arizona. So drugs come over the border in whichever way," Winn said. Winn also outlined the challenges facing Pima County due to what she described as a mismanaged policy. "Pima County is experiencing high homelessness, high drug use, and not a lot of solutions, and we're low on police because… they underfunded the police over the last three years. So we are at the effects of the bad policies from the last four years. "Although it's getting better, it seems that it got worse, to [the] great detriment of the people of Pima County," she added. Dan Dellinges, a state committeeman for the Santa Cruz County Republican Party, noted an uptick in property theft along common travel routes. "We've had an increase in general property theft along routes of travel [and] pass-throughs here. We also have a number of people who die crossing the desert here to the east, coming into the country illegally, and oftentimes those bodies are discovered by hunters or hikers or side-by-side drivers and then the county or the border patrol comes in and recovers those bodies," he said. Dellinges criticized what he described as a breakdown in cooperation between local and federal authorities. "Arizona state constitution recognizes supremacy with federal, United States Constitution. At this county it's not recognized, there's very little cooperation with the federal government," he explained. When asked to expand on this claim, Dellinges pointed to a fundamental disagreement he has with the county sheriff. In the context of immigration enforcement, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office in Arizona, led by Sheriff David Hathaway, has shown reluctance to fully cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). According to a January report from KGUN9, Hathaway pulled his deputies out of a program where they worked alongside Border Patrol. "The City of Nogales, Arizona is 95% Hispanic. The County of Santa Cruz is 80% Hispanic. I don't want there to be fear or tension between the community and my Sheriff's Office. We run the 911 dispatch center for the county, and most households are Hispanic here, so I don't want them to fear that they're inviting an immigration officer, a border patrol agent, into their house if they hear an intruder at the back door. I want them to not fear calling us," he said at the time. Hathaway has pointed to courts ruling that state and local agencies cannot be forced to enforce immigration law, labeling it a federal issue. He also believes his team does not have the specific training or funding necessary for immigration enforcement--instead urging his office to focus on local violent crimes. Jerez warned of the risks posed by letting in large numbers of unvetted migrants. "We let in so many people: unknown people, unvetted people, and some very bad people. The people here know how many people came through… These people are desperate and they don't know our rules. We're catching up, slowly catching up," he said. He also expressed concern about public complacency. "People are starting to normalize and say, 'Oh no, we don't have that big of a problem anymore,' because they're not remembering. You don't remember pain. I think we've just seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of an escalation of violence, an escalation of damage to the American people," Jerez continued. Winn concluded by supporting Trump's stance on border policy. "I believe the Trump administration's assertions that we are safer," she said. "We've done one thing, which is secure the border. The next step is to figure out who's in our country." The Santa Cruz County Democratic Party did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Self-deportations. Factory layoffs. Military zones. How Trump is transforming the U.S.-Mexico border.
Juan Ortíz trudged through 100-degree heat along the U.S.-Mexico border, weighed down by a backpack full of water bottles that he planned to leave for migrants trying to cross this rugged terrain. Only there hadn't been many migrants of late. When Ortíz started water drops in this especially dangerous stretch of desert near El Paso nearly two years ago, he sometimes encountered dozens of people trying to reach the U.S. in a single afternoon. Now he rarely sees any. Border crossings began falling during the final months of President Biden's term, and have plunged to their lowest levels in decades under President Trump. 'It's dramatically different,' Ortíz said, the desert silent except for the crunch of his footsteps in the sand and the whir of a Border Patrol helicopter overhead. 'Migrants no longer have any hope.' These borderlands surrounding El Paso were long a place of risk but also opportunity. Migrants chasing the American dream crossed by the tens of thousands annually, sometimes dodging federal agents and often seeking them out to ask for asylum. But Trump's immigration crackdown — a total ban on asylum, a mass deportation campaign and the unprecedented militarization of the border — has altered life here in myriad ways. Across the Rio Grande from El Paso in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez, shelters once hummed with life, rich with the smell of cooked stews and the chatter of people plotting their passage to the U.S. Today those shelters are largely empty, populated by migrants stranded in Mexico when Trump took office, and others who were in the United States but decided to leave, spooked by policies designed to instill fear. Maikold Zapata, 22, had been one of the lucky ones. He entered the U.S. last year via CBP One, a government app that helped more than 900,000 migrants make asylum appointments at ports of entry. Zapata worked as a landscaper in El Paso, sending most of his earnings to his family back in Venezuela but occasionally splurging on a steak dinner or a visit to a water park with friends. What kept Zapata up at night was a looming court date for his immigration case. Since Trump took office, Zapata had heard about federal agents showing up even at routine immigration hearings and taking migrants away in handcuffs. He was afraid of being arrested and sent to a detention facility like the so-called Alligator Alcatraz in Florida, or to a far-away country — perhaps El Salvador or South Sudan, where authorities have shipped U.S. deportees in recent months. 'Imagine arriving in Africa with no documents and no money," Zapata said. "No." Missing his early July court date was also not an option, since the electronic bracelet on his wrist allowed immigration agents to track his location. So Zapata stuffed his few possessions in a backpack and walked south over the U.S.-Mexico border bridge, abandoning his asylum claim and the dream he had worked his way across two continents to achieve. He plans to return to South America, likely to Colombia, where his mother is living. "I'll go back, working the whole way again." For now he is living at Oasis de Migrante, a small shelter in downtown Juárez, where he has befriended another Venezuelan who made a similar choice. Richard Osorio, 35, decided to leave the U.S. after his husband landed in immigrant detention. Osorio, who worked in home care for the elderly, said it felt like only a matter of time before immigration agents captured him: "I was filled with fear." He hopes that his partner's attorney can persuade the U.S. to deport the man to Mexico, and that he and Osorio can make a life there. The vast majority of migrants languishing along the border never made it to the United States. Eddy Lalvay got close. He was 17 when he and his 5-year-old nephew, Gael, arrived in Juárez last year. Originally from Ecuador, they were trying to reach New Jersey, where Gael's mother lives. But before they could cross, they were detained by Mexican authorities, who sent them to a government shelter for minors. Lalvay was released when he turned 18. But Gael remains in custody, where he recently turned 6, and authorities say they will release him only to a parent or a grandparent. "I'm trying to be strong, but I feel awful," Lalvay said on a recent afternoon as he sat at another shelter in a working-class neighborhood boxed in by sprawling industrial parks. Francisco González Palacios, a Christian pastor who runs the facility and leads a network of faith-based shelters, said the number of migrants housed by the network has dropped from 1,400 to 250 in recent months. "Nobody is coming from the south," he said. Some shelters and nonprofit groups providing legal or humanitarian assistance to migrants may have to close, he said, because many were indirectly funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Trump shuttered. Read more: Trump promised vast deportations to Mexico. Why are the numbers so low? He tells the migrants gathered at his shelter to rethink their goals now that their "plan A" — a life in the U.S. — is out of reach. "Look for a plan B," he says. "Stay awhile, start to work. God will help you." But other Trump policies are hurting the economy in the region, limiting opportunities from migrants. Juárez has long drawn Mexicans from poorer parts of the country who come to work in its factories, which boomed under the North American Free Trade Agreement, churning out auto parts and other goods destined for the U.S. But Trump's on-again, off-again threats of tariffs on goods from Mexico have stunned industry in the Juárez area, with factories laying off thousands of workers. "We're in the middle of tremendous uncertainty," said María Teresa Delgado Zarate, vice president of INDEX Juárez, a trade group. About 308,000 workers are employed in factories today, she said, down from 340,000 a few years ago. Mexican Juan Bustos, 52, recently lost his assembly line job making auto parts. Most days, he lines up at 6 a.m. outside factories that say they are hiring to try to get new work. "It's not easy like it was before," he said. So much of life in Juárez depends on decisions made in Washington, he said. "He changes his mind minute to minute," Bustos said of Trump. "We're at his mercy." On the U.S. side, industry is also reeling from the tariff uncertainty. Jerry Pacheco, who operates an industrial park in Santa Teresa, N.M., a few miles west of El Paso, said several companies that planned new projects there have pulled out since Trump took office. His park abuts a new militarized zone that stretches 200 miles across a vast expanse of New Mexico. Another 63-mile-long zone has been established along the border nearby in Texas. The Pentagon, which made the designations, has deployed some 9,000 active-duty troops to the border as part of Trump's directive to expand the military's role in reducing migrant crossings. Migrants who enter the new "national defense" zones while crossing the border are being detained by U.S. troops, charged with trespassing and turned over to immigration authorities. It's part of a broader militarization of immigration enforcement in this stretch of border. U-2 spy planes have been flying missions in the skies. At the nearby Army base of Ft. Bliss, the U.S. is constructing a new 5,000-bed immigrant detention camp. The U.S. has also pushed Mexico to keep migrants from reaching Juárez and other border cities, and Mexican troops have ramped up enforcement in recent years. Migrant advocates blame those policies on a deadly fire at a detention center in Juárez in 2023 that killed 40 migrants and injured 27. Ortíz, the activist, used to traverse the part of the border that has been turned into a national defense zone, leaving water for the migrants who crossed. But on a recent afternoon, while heading out to check on a water tank, he was stopped by Border Patrol agents who warned him he was trespassing on military land. The buildup of troops at the border and Trump's changes to the asylum system have made it nearly impossible for migrants to cross, Ortíz said. In June, there were fewer Border Patrol encounters with migrants than in any month on record, according to the White House. On the day with fewest encounters, border agents apprehended just 137 people across the entire 2,000-mile long border. But Ortíz is convinced that migration levels can't stay this low forever. There are too many jobs that need filling north of the border, he said, and too much poverty and strife south of it. This region has been a site of migration since pre-colonial times, he said. El Paso, which means "the pass," got its name from Spanish explorers who arrived in the late 16th century and established a trade route here leading from Mexico City to Santa Fe. Movement, he said, is part of our nature. "You will never be able to fully stop human migration," Ortíz said. "You never have and you never will.' Those most desperate to cross will find a way, he says. And that will probably mean paying smugglers even larger sums and taking riskier routes. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
ABC News
3 days ago
- Politics
- ABC News
Mexico cracks down on drug cartels under pressure from Donald Trump
In the dim light of a vacant room, Manuel is fidgeting. In his hand are 25 blue pills — fentanyl, he says — the drug Mexican authorities are currently hunting down. He could be jailed if he is caught with even one of them. "I don't want to know what will happen," he says, nervously. Manuel — not his real name — is linked to the Sinaloa cartel, one of the world's most notorious traffickers of fentanyl, a deadly synthetic opioid 50 times more potent than heroin. Over the past decade, the cartel has been making vast quantities of the drug to smuggle into the United States, fuelling an opioid epidemic that is killing tens of thousands of Americans a year. But lately, that business has been under pressure, Manuel says. Since Donald Trump returned to the US presidency last year he has been heaping pressure on the Mexican government to stop the flow of fentanyl over the border, forcing Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum to launch one of the biggest crackdowns on the country's drug cartels in recent memory. In just under a year since she was elected, Mexican authorities claim to have dismantled over 750 clandestine drug labs, arrested dozens of cartel bosses and seized massive quantities of fentanyl. In February, under the threat of crippling tariffs from the new Trump administration, Sheinbaum agreed to send 10,000 Mexican National Guard troops to reinforce the US–Mexico border to "prevent drug trafficking, particularly fentanyl". "There's a lot of surveillance, a lot of government, right? Both in the US and here in Mexico, and they're working together. And yeah, there's fear," says Manuel. "I mean, it's completely at a standstill because of the laws that Trump is putting in place now. People are scared, you know." For Mexico's cartels, fentanyl has proved a miracle product — cheap to make and easy to smuggle. Unlike plant-based opioids like heroin, fentanyl does not require big plots of farmland or teams of labourers to cultivate a crop. The chemical precursors for making it can be ordered in the mail from China, with enough to manufacture commercial quantities of pills arriving in a small package. Cartel chemists can cook the drug in makeshift labs in home kitchens with very little in the way of specialist equipment. The resulting product is extremely potent; even a single fentanyl pill can kill. According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), just 2 milligrams of the drug — about the size of a pencil tip — can be fatal, and some pills have been found to contain more than twice that lethal dose. It is perhaps no surprise that Mexico's booming illicit fentanyl trade has become a point of political friction with its northern neighbour. In the US, where an opioid addiction crisis has long been a problem, the surge of fentanyl from Mexico has helped fuel an unprecedented wave of drug overdoses. Of the 107,000 overdose deaths in America in 2023, almost 70 per cent were caused by fentanyl and other opioids, according to DEA figures. Watch tonight as Foreign Correspondent goes inside Mexico's cartel crackdown, 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview. US intelligence agencies say most of the illicit fentanyl is coming over the border from Mexico. Stopping fentanyl smuggling is now a "central" issue between the US and Mexico, according to Mexican academic and organised crime expert Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera. "It's central because the United States government has made it central, blaming the cartels for a much more complex issue that the United States society is facing," she says. Claudia Sheinbaum, a former scientist and mayor of Mexico City, was elected president in 2024 in a landslide victory, becoming the first woman to lead Mexico. The 2024 election was the most violent in Mexico's history and public security was one of the top issues. On taking office last October, Sheinbaum quickly broke with her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador's, softer approach to dealing with the cartels. His so-called "hugs not bullets" strategy sought to avoid shootouts with Mexico's powerful and well-armed criminal networks, focusing instead on social programs to give young men an alternative to joining a cartel. "This is the end of the 'hugs not bullets' strategy. That definitely failed," says Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera. Trump's election in November 2024 only pushed Sheinbaum further down that path, she says. The US president has continued to threaten military invasion unless Sheinbaum does more to curb fentanyl smuggling and crack down on the cartels, even accusing her of being "afraid" of them. Sheinbaum has walked a delicate line to placate him, brushing off the taunts while pushing back on US threats to put boots on the ground in Mexico. "We reject the presence of US troops because we are not in agreement, because Mexico is a sovereign, independent country," she said in response to a question from Foreign Correspondent at her daily press conference in Mexico City. "We coordinate and collaborate with the United States. We do not subordinate ourselves." "She manages Trump very well," says Correa-Cabrera of the Mexican president. "She confronts Trump, but not in a way that seems that it is a fight. She does it with respect." But Correa-Cabrera warns that Sheinbaum is falling into a trap by adopting his war on fentanyl. "Fentanyl is a discourse driven by the United States security agencies," she says. "It's a strategic interest for the United States to fight and to deal with the fentanyl crisis, to go after the cartels. "And now Claudia is making that fight her fight. It's a response to the pressure exercised by Donald Trump." That pressure is ever-present in the Mexican border town of Nogales, which sits up against the wall dividing Mexico from the US state of Arizona. In recent months, local police officer Martin Pino has seen the arrival of more Mexican Army and National Guard units under Sheinbaum's crackdown. On a routine patrol along the border, we are pulled over by a unit of heavily armed Mexican troops, who question Pino and our crew about what we are doing there. Even local cops are not totally above suspicion these days. It is not just the Mexican military presence that has been ramped up in Nogales — the US has also moved troops and military hardware to the US side of the border. In one Nogales neighbourhood, where the houses sit right along the border fence, an armoured US Stryker vehicle now sits sentinel on a hilltop, just metres from Mexicans' backyards. About a hundred Strykers have been deployed along the US border this year, each equipped with state-of-the-art cameras that can detect the slightest movement. Pino says this one appeared in Nogales in recent months and has been keeping a watchful eye ever since. Just beyond the outskirts of town, another Stryker sits parked overlooking a spot where the border fence is low enough to climb over. This might have been a blind spot in the past, but nothing goes unnoticed now. Within minutes of the ABC's arrival, US Customs and Border Patrol agents arrive in a pick-up truck, followed by a detachment of US soldiers. Pino is unfazed by the show of force on Mexico's doorstep. He welcomes the backup and says Mexican authorities are coordinating closely with their US counterparts. "It's good because drug traffickers and people who traffic undocumented immigrants are slowed down and stopped when they see this type of situation with authorities on the US side," says Pinto. "We need all the help we can get." Border crossings were already falling when Trump took office but have plunged further still, reaching the lowest level in decades this year. But it remains to be seen how effective the crackdown can really be in a town where cartel power is deeply entrenched. Nogales is a known Sinaloa stronghold. Its proximity to the border has made it a prized possession for the cartel, which has long smuggled drugs and people into the US here, mostly through legal ports of entry. Thousands of trucks, cars and pedestrians cross into Arizona through Nogales every day. Last month, US Customs officers said they had intercepted more than a million fentanyl pills and other drugs in a series of seizures at the Nogales port of entry in a single week. Still, Cartel smugglers have honed their methods of getting illicit goods into the US over the decades. In the middle of town, right next to the border wall, Pino shows us one of their more ingenious methods. Lifting a steel grate in the street, he climbs down a ladder into a broad, dark stormwater drain leading right under the border wall. Cartel smugglers once dug tunnels from the backyards of nearby houses to join up with this main passage, smuggling migrants and drugs in secret right under the authorities' noses. Half a dozen white patches are visible on the walls where authorities have sealed up cartel smuggling tunnels over the years. "It's amazing, incredible," says Pino. "Even as a police officer, I find it hard to believe. It's like something out of a movie or some science fiction thing. This drain now needs to be constantly monitored. Claudia Sheinbaum says her strategy for taking on the cartels is working, and points to a 40 per cent drop in seizures of fentanyl at the US-Mexico border since the start of the Trump presidency as proof. But Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera says that number does not necessarily mean cartels are failing to get drugs into the US. "If they go down, it's because probably they are entering without them knowing, because probably, you know, cartels are creating new tunnels or they are doing it through the sea," she says. In June, US Border Patrol agents discovered a cross-border tunnel under construction between Tijuana and San Diego. Running for almost a kilometre at a depth of up to 15 metres, they described it as "highly sophisticated". Ms Correa-Cabrera fears Sheinbaum's focus on fentanyl risks coming at the expense of addressing the country's other issues, such as extortion, corruption and rising drug use, all to appease a US president who can easily change his mind. "You have limited resources and those resources are being used by Claudia Sheinbaum to fight the wars of the United States," she says. "This show is costing Mexico a lot of money … without addressing our own problems. It will backfire, not only on Claudia Sheinbaum, but on the Mexican people." It is a criticism Claudia Sheinbaum rejects. For now, she remains hugely popular in Mexico, enjoying an approval rating around 75 per cent, and is forging ahead with her cartel crackdown. "Are we doing it to satisfy President Trump? No," Sheinbaum told Foreign Correspondent at her press conference in Mexico City. "We do it because we don't want fentanyl to reach any young person in the United States, but we also don't want fentanyl to reach any young person in Mexico or any young person anywhere in the world." Watch Mexico's Cartel Crackdown tonight on Foreign Correspondent at 8pm on ABC TV and iview.
CTV News
3 days ago
- Politics
- CTV News
This family self-deported to Mexico, and lost everything
U.S. Army Sgt. Salvador Hernandez stands beside Stryker combat vehicles while watching over the U.S.-Mexico border fence from a hilltop in Nogales, Ariz., Tuesday, July 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) URUAPAN, Mexico -- As broadcasters declared Donald Trump the next president of the United States, Sonia Coria turned to her husband and asked if they should go home. For seven months they had been living in Glendale, Arizona, sharing a two-bedroom apartment with Coria's aunt and slowly building a life far from the threats and cartel violence that made them flee Mexico. Coria, 25, took odd jobs as a cleaner and her husband, Carlos Leon, also 25, worked as a gardener. Their eldest child Naomi, eight, was going to a local charter school, making friends and picking up English. In the small kidney-shaped pool of the condominium building where they lived, she had learned to swim. Little Carlos, five, was learning to ride a bike. Their neighbourhood in western Glendale - a city of some 250,000 people just outside Phoenix - was home to lots of Mexican migrants. Opposite their apartment block was a small butcher, Carnicería Uruapan, named after the town they had fled in the dangerous Mexican state of Michoacan. They had bought their first car on installments - a tan-coloured 2008 Ford F-150 pickup truck that cost them US$4,000. They were still poor, sometimes going to soup kitchens for a meal or picking up appliances and toys that neighbours had thrown out, but it was a life they could only have dreamed of back home in Mexico. Trump's campaign, and his victory, changed how they felt about living in the United States. They had followed the law, entering the United States at a border crossing and applying for asylum. The application was in process. But they now worried they could lose everything. 'We run the risk of them taking away the little we've managed to scrape together,' Coria remembers telling her husband that night as election coverage played on the television. Leon nodded and hugged his wife. They began to cry quietly, afraid Carlos and Naomi would hear them as they played on the floor in the bedroom they all shared. The kids had been allowed to stay up late, so that Coria and Leon could watch the results come in. The family's account is based on interviews with Leon, Coria and NGOs that helped them on their return to Mexico. Reuters was not able to verify all details of their journey, but core facts were supported by photos, videos, messages, and customs documents the family shared. As the Trump administration vows to enact the 'largest deportation operation in American history,' authorities have raided workplaces, sent alleged Venezuelan gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador, and deployed National Guard and active-duty Marines to contain anti-government protests in Los Angeles. Beyond the 239,000 people the administration has deported so far, some cuffed and led on to planes, the very public expulsion of migrants has had another effect: triggering tough and complicated decisions in immigrant households across the U.S. on whether to stay or leave. As they discussed returning to Mexico, Leon set one condition: That they wait until after Trump took office on January 20, to save up some more money and to see if he proved as hardline on migration as he'd promised. In the end, fear led them to leave before Trump had even been sworn in. 'Project homecoming' Despite high-profile deportations to Guantanamo or El Salvador, the total number of deportations under Trump trails former president Joe Biden's last year in office. Increasingly, persuading migrants to leave of their own accord has become a core strategy. 'Self-deportation is safe,' reads a DHS flyer on display at immigration courts in the U.S. 'Leave on your own terms by picking your departure flight.' The Trump administration in March launched an app called CBP Home designed to help people relocate and in May, Trump unveiled 'Project Homecoming,' a sweeping initiative that offers 'illegal aliens' $1,000 and a free flight to leave. Since then, 'tens of thousands of illegal aliens' self-deported through CBP Home app, a Department of Homeland Security official told Reuters, without giving further details. More than 56,000 Mexicans have voluntarily returned from the U.S. since Trump returned to the White House, according to Mexican government figures. Figures from last year were unavailable. Self-deportation is not a new idea. During the Great Depression and again in 1954's Operation Wetback, U.S. deportation campaigns pressured over a million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans to leave - far more than through formal deportations. 'Self-deportation is not an accident, but a deliberate strategy,' said Maria Jose Espinosa, executive director at CEDA, a non-profit organization in Washington that works to improve relations between the U.S. and Latin American countries. 'Left with nothing' On January 19, Coria, Leon, and the two kids packed what they could fit into their F-150 and drove toward the Mexican border. It was just a three-hour drive. A few weeks before, they had witnessed immigration enforcement detaining the father of a Mexican family living two doors down from them. That, Coria said, had made up their minds. A lawyer they saw at the Mexican consulate in Phoenix reinforced their view, telling them that their asylum application was weak and they would likely be deported. The consulate told Reuters the lawyer, Hugo Larios, did on occasion offer free consultations, but they did not have access to details of what was discussed or a record of the Coria-Leon family visiting in January, only in April 2024. Larios did not respond to requests for comment. It was a hard decision to leave. They had fled their hometown in February last year after armed men claiming to be members of the notorious Jalisco New Generation Cartel began showing up at the avocado farm where Leon was working as a guard, demanding protection money. Leon didn't have the money to pay, and the owner was away. Now, they were going back. Uruapan is one of the most violent cities in the world, with an official murder rate of nearly 60 per 100,000 inhabitants. In recent years organized crime has taken over the area, running or extorting farms and businesses and killing those who refuse to pay. But the family hoped their savings would make a difference. They had managed to scrape together $5,000 and the plan was to buy land and open an auto repair shop using their pickup truck to help with the business. At 5 p.m., on January 19, they drew up to the Dennis DeConcini border crossing at Nogales. As they passed Mexican customs, the Mexican National Guard stopped their vehicle and asked for papers, the family said. Leon didn't have the car title, just a temporary permit issued that day, so officials confiscated the truck and threatened to arrest him for vehicle smuggling. The officials also took $5,000, the family's entire savings, for what they called a fine before Leon could go free. With no car and no money, Coria, Leon, Naomi and Carlos sat on the ground outside customs, surrounded by their remaining possessions - 100 kilos of clothing, tools, kitchen utensils, a television, refrigerator, and children's toys. 'We lost everything,' Coria recalled, in tears. 'We left with nothing and came back worse off.' A spokesperson from Mexico's National Customs Agency declined to comment on the specifics of the Coria case. She said in an email to Reuters that its office 'acts in strict adherence to the legal framework governing the entry and exit of merchandise, as well as the customs control applicable to persons and vehicles crossing points of entry into the national territory.' Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum told journalists this month that her government is strengthening its 'Mexico Embraces You' program to receive Mexican migrants voluntarily returning from the U.S. to ensure 'they are not subject to any act of corruption by customs or immigration when they enter our country.' The program offers a $100 cash grant, job placement, free transportation to their places of origin, and facilities for importing goods, but the family returned before it went into action. As the sun began to set, the dry desert air turned cold. The family worried about where to spend the night and how they would reach Michoacan, some 2,000 kilometers away. They were spotted by Francisco Olachea, a nurse with Voices from the Border, a humanitarian organization that works on both sides of the border. Olachea remembers approaching the crying family outside customs and offering them a hand. They loaded the Corias' belongings onto the NGO's ambulance and a rented pickup truck paid for by Olachea and another NGO, Salvavision. That night, Olachea took them to NANA Ministries, a Christian organization in the border town of Nogales. They were offered water, fruit, coffee, and pozole, a traditional Mexican broth made from corn kernels with meat and vegetables. The four spent the night in a small room. Together, Voices from the Border and Salvavision raised just over $1,000 to buy the family bus tickets to Michoacan and send some belongings to Sonia Coria's mother's house in black garbage bags. What they couldn't send was donated to the church where they had spent the night. On January 20, the family returned to Uruapan. The four of them shared a small room with no door in the tin-roofed home belonging to Coria's mother. The couple slept on the floor, and the kids shared a bed with no mattress. They later moved into an even smaller room at an aunt's house. Leon eventually found work in a car repair workshop. Coria got a job in a Chinese restaurant. The children complain about leaving the United States. Carlos asks for his bike; Naomi is forgetting her English. In June, a 62-page letter from customs seen by Reuters informed them that their truck had been seized and had become property of the federal treasury. Also, that they owe the equivalent of $18,000 in customs duties for bringing in the F-150 to Mexico. Reporting by Diego Oré; Additional reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington DC and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Editing by Stephen Eisenhammer and Suzanne Goldenberg, Reuters
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4 days ago
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Self-deportations. Factory layoffs. Military zones. How Trump is transforming the U.S.-Mexico border.
Juan Ortíz trudged through 100-degree heat along the U.S.-Mexico border, weighed down by a backpack full of water bottles that he planned to leave for migrants trying to cross this rugged terrain. Only there hadn't been many migrants of late. When Ortíz started water drops in this especially dangerous stretch of desert near El Paso nearly two years ago, he sometimes encountered dozens of people trying to reach the U.S. in a single afternoon. Now he rarely sees any. Border crossings began falling during the final months of President Biden's term, and have plunged to their lowest levels in decades under President Trump. 'It's dramatically different,' Ortíz said, the desert silent except for the crunch of his footsteps in the sand and the whir of a Border Patrol helicopter overhead. 'Migrants no longer have any hope.' These borderlands surrounding El Paso were long a place of risk but also opportunity. Migrants chasing the American dream crossed by the tens of thousands annually, sometimes dodging federal agents and often seeking them out to ask for asylum. But Trump's immigration crackdown — a total ban on asylum, a mass deportation campaign and the unprecedented militarization of the border — has altered life here in myriad ways. Across the Rio Grande from El Paso in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez, shelters once hummed with life, rich with the smell of cooked stews and the chatter of people plotting their passage to the U.S. Today those shelters are largely empty, populated by migrants stranded in Mexico when Trump took office, and others who were in the United States but decided to leave, spooked by policies designed to instill fear. Maikold Zapata, 22, had been one of the lucky ones. He entered the U.S. last year via CBP One, a government app that helped more than 900,000 migrants make asylum appointments at ports of entry. Zapata worked as a landscaper in El Paso, sending most of his earnings to his family back in Venezuela but occasionally splurging on a steak dinner or a visit to a water park with friends. What kept Zapata up at night was a looming court date for his immigration case. Since Trump took office, Zapata had heard about federal agents showing up even at routine immigration hearings and taking migrants away in handcuffs. He was afraid of being arrested and sent to a detention facility like the so-called Alligator Alcatraz in Florida, or to a far-away country — perhaps El Salvador or South Sudan, where authorities have shipped U.S. deportees in recent months. 'Imagine arriving in Africa with no documents and no money," Zapata said. "No." Missing his early July court date was also not an option, since the electronic bracelet on his wrist allowed immigration agents to track his location. So Zapata stuffed his few possessions in a backpack and walked south over the U.S.-Mexico border bridge, abandoning his asylum claim and the dream he had worked his way across two continents to achieve. He plans to return to South America, likely to Colombia, where his mother is living. "I'll go back, working the whole way again." For now he is living at Oasis de Migrante, a small shelter in downtown Juárez, where he has befriended another Venezuelan who made a similar choice. Richard Osorio, 35, decided to leave the U.S. after his husband landed in immigrant detention. Osorio, who worked in home care for the elderly, said it felt like only a matter of time before immigration agents captured him: "I was filled with fear." He hopes that his partner's attorney can persuade the U.S. to deport the man to Mexico, and that he and Osorio can make a life there. The vast majority of migrants languishing along the border never made it to the United States. Eddy Lalvay got close. He was 17 when he and his 5-year-old nephew, Gael, arrived in Juárez last year. Originally from Ecuador, they were trying to reach New Jersey, where Gael's mother lives. But before they could cross, they were detained by Mexican authorities, who sent them to a government shelter for minors. Lalvay was released when he turned 18. But Gael remains in custody, where he recently turned 6, and authorities say they will release him only to a parent or a grandparent. "I'm trying to be strong, but I feel awful," Lalvay said on a recent afternoon as he sat at another shelter in a working-class neighborhood boxed in by sprawling industrial parks. Francisco González Palacios, a Christian pastor who runs the facility and leads a network of faith-based shelters, said the number of migrants housed by the network has dropped from 1,400 to 250 in recent months. "Nobody is coming from the south," he said. Some shelters and nonprofit groups providing legal or humanitarian assistance to migrants may have to close, he said, because many were indirectly funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Trump shuttered. Read more: Trump promised vast deportations to Mexico. Why are the numbers so low? He tells the migrants gathered at his shelter to rethink their goals now that their "plan A" — a life in the U.S. — is out of reach. "Look for a plan B," he says. "Stay awhile, start to work. God will help you." But other Trump policies are hurting the economy in the region, limiting opportunities from migrants. Juárez has long drawn Mexicans from poorer parts of the country who come to work in its factories, which boomed under the North American Free Trade Agreement, churning out auto parts and other goods destined for the U.S. But Trump's on-again, off-again threats of tariffs on goods from Mexico have stunned industry in the Juárez area, with factories laying off thousands of workers. "We're in the middle of tremendous uncertainty," said María Teresa Delgado Zarate, vice president of INDEX Juárez, a trade group. About 308,000 workers are employed in factories today, she said, down from 340,000 a few years ago. Mexican Juan Bustos, 52, recently lost his assembly line job making auto parts. Most days, he lines up at 6 a.m. outside factories that say they are hiring to try to get new work. "It's not easy like it was before," he said. So much of life in Juárez depends on decisions made in Washington, he said. "He changes his mind minute to minute," Bustos said of Trump. "We're at his mercy." On the U.S. side, industry is also reeling from the tariff uncertainty. Jerry Pacheco, who operates an industrial park in Santa Teresa, N.M., a few miles west of El Paso, said several companies that planned new projects there have pulled out since Trump took office. His park abuts a new militarized zone that stretches 200 miles across a vast expanse of New Mexico. Another 63-mile-long zone has been established along the border nearby in Texas. The Pentagon, which made the designations, has deployed some 9,000 active-duty troops to the border as part of Trump's directive to expand the military's role in reducing migrant crossings. Migrants who enter the new "national defense" zones while crossing the border are being detained by U.S. troops, charged with trespassing and turned over to immigration authorities. It's part of a broader militarization of immigration enforcement in this stretch of border. U-2 spy planes have been flying missions in the skies. At the nearby Army base of Ft. Bliss, the U.S. is constructing a new 5,000-bed immigrant detention camp. The U.S. has also pushed Mexico to keep migrants from reaching Juárez and other border cities, and Mexican troops have ramped up enforcement in recent years. Migrant advocates blame those policies on a deadly fire at a detention center in Juárez in 2023 that killed 40 migrants and injured 27. Ortíz, the activist, used to traverse the part of the border that has been turned into a national defense zone, leaving water for the migrants who crossed. But on a recent afternoon, while heading out to check on a water tank, he was stopped by Border Patrol agents who warned him he was trespassing on military land. The buildup of troops at the border and Trump's changes to the asylum system have made it nearly impossible for migrants to cross, Ortíz said. In June, there were fewer Border Patrol encounters with migrants than in any month on record, according to the White House. On the day with fewest encounters, border agents apprehended just 137 people across the entire 2,000-mile long border. But Ortíz is convinced that migration levels can't stay this low forever. There are too many jobs that need filling north of the border, he said, and too much poverty and strife south of it. This region has been a site of migration since pre-colonial times, he said. El Paso, which means "the pass," got its name from Spanish explorers who arrived in the late 16th century and established a trade route here leading from Mexico City to Santa Fe. Movement, he said, is part of our nature. "You will never be able to fully stop human migration," Ortíz said. "You never have and you never will.' Those most desperate to cross will find a way, he says. And that will probably mean paying smugglers even larger sums and taking riskier routes. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. Solve the daily Crossword
