Latest news with #USMexicoBorder
Yahoo
18 hours 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
a day 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
a day 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
Yahoo
2 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. Solve the daily Crossword
CNN
3 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
Fireworks, flashlights and snipers: Attacks on immigration facilities put law enforcement on edge
On the night of July 4, a group of assailants mounted a coordinated attack on an immigration detention facility near Fort Worth, Texas, using vandalism and fireworks to draw officers out and into the sights of two shooters positioned in a line of trees across the street, authorities allege. Barely three days later, a Michigan man opened fire at a Border Patrol facility nearly 500 miles to the south in McAllen, near the US-Mexico border. The man was able to fire dozens of rounds at officers, one of whom was struck in the knee, before being quickly killed by returning gunfire. The attacks don't appear to be directly connected. But amid the continued backlash the agency faces in the wake of the Trump administration's deportation efforts, they have put officials on edge, prompting them to increase the presence of security officers at the front of Department of Homeland Security facilities, federal officials told CNN. The administration points to the violent incidents as part of a broader trend of immigration enforcement personnel under siege and a growing anger that officials say has been stoked by critics of Trump's policies. Some of the administration's critics, while not condoning violence, contend the ramp-up in immigration raids, masked agents and use of the National Guard have served to spark fear and increase tensions. The DHS has warned of dramatic spikes in assaults on its officers, saying earlier this year incidents had risen over 400% in May and now, just two months later, to over 800% when compared to the previous year. As of mid-July there had been 93 assaults on officers this year. During the same period in 2024, that number was 10, an ICE official told CNN. The attack on the immigration detention facility outside of Fort Worth is markedly different, however, than incidents during arrests and raids by ICE officers — an environment primed for confrontation — and shows a level of coordination not often seen in attacks on federal agencies in the US. 'It makes me really upset,' ICE's Acting Director Todd Lyons told CNN of the attacks, noting that he started his career in nearby Dallas. 'It makes me very mad. It makes me scared.' Lyons said his biggest fear in the job was losing an officer. 'Right now, that's the thing that keeps me up at night the most,' the acting director said, 'I'm very scared because of all the threats and the rhetoric that I'm going to lose an ICE agent or officer because of this craziness that's going on.' John Sandweg, who served as an acting director for ICE during former President Barack Obama's second term, told CNN that previously, DHS officials were concerned about general officer safety when executing an arrest or search warrant, not necessarily with targeted attacks. 'I haven't seen anything like this, and I don't know how to explain it. There's certainly no justification for it,' Sandweg told CNN, adding: 'This is different. This is political violence.' According to charging documents, a group of roughly a dozen people dressed in all black began shooting fireworks toward the Prairieland Detention Facility late at night on July 4, with two in the group eventually breaking off to spray paint cars and a guard post with slogans including 'Ice Pig.' and 'F**k you pigs.' A corrections officer called 911 and several other officers started to approach the group while one of its members began signaling to others with a flashlight, according to court documents. Just as this was unfolding, the documents say, a local police officer responding to the emergency call pulled up in the parking lot and, when he exited his car, was shot in the neck by someone lurking in the woods. Miraculously, the officer survived. The person signaling to the others with their flashlight began shooting at the correctional officers from a line of trees across the street before fleeing. No one else was hit. Detectives would later determine that both rifles used in the shooting were purchased by ex-Marine Benjamin Hanil Song, who has been charged with attempted murder of a federal officer. A total of 14 people have been charged related to the shooting, some of whom allegedly tried to hide Song after the incident. None of the defendants have entered a plea in the case, and court records say that others, who have not been named or charged, are cooperating with investigators. While police were able to arrest the majority of those allegedly involved shortly after the shooting — some who fled on foot through some nearby trees, another who had stuck to walking alongside the roads and another who drove off in their car — Song evaded capture for the next 11 days. 'They were dressed in black, military-style clothing, some had on body armor, some were covered in mud, some were armed, and some had radios,' the charging documents say. One of the individuals carried a 'Faraday bag' meant to block cell signals with two phones inside along with a pistol in her backpack. Another person had a disassembled rifle in a backpack. The firearms, authorities say, were purchased by Song, including the rifle, which he allegedly purchased from a pawn shop 10 days prior. The individual with the rifle also had a pistol tucked inside his waist band. CNN has reached out to attorneys representing those charged in the case. Another alleged member of the group was stopped by a police officer who had been radioed a description of their car. Inside the car, police say they found a pistol, two Kevlar ballistic-style vests, a ballistic helmet, two rifles and a loaded magazine. Canvassing the area of the shooting, police also found the two AR-15 style rifles allegedly used against the officers, court records say — including one equipped with a device that modifies the trigger, allowing the shooter to rapidly fire bullets. The rifle had a bullet jammed in the chamber, a problem that can arise when shooters use the binary trigger device. Officers also found two body-armor plate carriers loaded with ammunition for the rifles as well as one magazine clip designed for a pistol. During the course of the investigation, police also found flyers saying, 'FIGHT ICE WITH CLASS TERROR' and 'FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS' in the backpack of one of those arrested. According to court records, authorities believe Song hid in a wooded area nearby the facility overnight to avoid arrest, based on cell phone location data, until an associate of Song's could pick him up the next day, supplying him with clothes from Walmart. Song was later arrested on July 15 after making the Texas top 10 most wanted fugitives. In chats on the encrypted messaging platform Signal allegedly used by the group, agents found 'evidence that the group had performed reconnaissance' at the detention facility, 'including detailed descriptions of the area and photographs,' the criminal complaint says. Members of the group also used Signal to shuttle Song along to others in the group for shelter while he was running from police and discussed deleting messages and removing Song from certain chat groups, the complaint says. Two people have been arrested and charged with helping Song avoid arrest. One unnamed member of the chats told agents they had been invited to join a few years ago during a protest. Court documents don't specify the reason for the protest. According to the FBI agent who was part of the investigation into the shooting, the group of assailants had used one of their homes in Dallas as a staging area for the shooting. Days after the shootout in Dallas, 27-year-old Ryan Luis Mosqueda opened fire on officers outside a Border Patrol facility near the Texas-Mexico border, hitting one in the knee. Mosqueda was able to fire off dozens of rounds before federal agents quickly shot and killed him. Mosqueda had another rifle and other weapons in his car, according to local law enforcement. Earlier that morning, Mosqueda's father told police his son had gone missing around 3:48 a.m. and had a mental deficiency. The FBI is investigating the matter. A DHS spokesperson has blamed the increased attacks on 'crazed rhetoric from gutter politicians' while Democrats have said the department is not allowing them to access detention facilities and are subjecting immigrants to extremely poor conditions. Prosecutors in New Jersey filed charges against a Democratic lawmaker after a brief melee outside a detention center there when ICE officers arrested the mayor of Newark for entering a gated area of the facility. Critics of the agency say the tactics of many ICE agents, wearing masks and plain clothes when arresting people, paired with constant raids – at one point sweeping through a public park – and, at times, mistakenly detaining US citizens have created an explosive and fear-laden environment that the Trump administration has spearheaded. 'This role can shape an individual's actions and how they respond, particularly when they're scared,' Missouri Rep. Wesley Bell said of ICE during a congressional hearing Wednesday on unaccompanied immigrant minors in the US. Bell pointed to several stories over the past few months in which people impersonated ICE officers to rob and harass others, noting how easily it was given the agency's use of masks and plain clothes to arrest people. Lyons said that the increased number of assaults on ICE officers was 'following that trajectory' of the uptick in ICE raids and arrests but added that 'a lot of the comments and rhetoric being directed towards ICE and its mission is really firing up certain groups; these kind of lunatic factions.' Sandweg told CNN that 'some of the uptick in assault on officers is a direct byproduct of those arrests, in the sense that the nature of the arrests have shifted.' The former acting ICE director said that as arrests become less targeted and include larger swaths of people, like several ICE raids seen recently in California, the risk for agents and officers on the ground increases. 'I'm just saying it's a reality that when you have a large number of agents making an operation in a public setting, in an urban environment, it increases the risks dramatically of these kinds of things happening,' Sandweg said of protests where individuals have assaulted and thrown rocks at officers. DHS has had to deploy twice the number of ICE agents for certain arrests than they normally would because of the increase in protests and individuals attempting to intervene in arrests. 'It's not because of the threat of the alien,' Lyons said. 'It's because we need that other five to six officers and agents to provide security' for those agents conducting the arrest. Lyons noted that 'it's usually not other migrants or illegal aliens' who 'want to inject themselves into a law enforcement situation, which could be dangerous for everybody.' ICE's budget is set for a massive cash infusion after Republicans delivered Trump an agenda-laden spending bill earlier this month, giving the agency $75 billion to expand enforcement and removal operations. While a large chunk of that cash will go toward building detention facilities to hold the influx of deportees, ICE will be able to spend large sums on recruiting and training up new officers to bolster the number of daily arrests, something the Trump administration wants to significantly increase. When the increased budget is fully deployed, Sandweg said, it 'is going to fundamentally change immigration enforcement in a way we've never seen. It's going to double almost the number of agents ICE can put on the street.'
