Illegal intersections at the US-Mexico border have fallen to lows in decades. Once crowded immigrant shelters are empty. Instead of heading north, people stuck in Mexico are beginning to return home in larger numbers.
The borders are barely recognised since several years ago, when hundreds of thousands of people around the world were crossing the US every month in chaos and turbulent situations.
Facing public outrage during the 2024 election campaign, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has shut down asylum seekers and pushed immigrants at bay in Mexico. By the end of his term, the border had been fairly quiet and the illegal intersection had fallen to the lowest level of his presidency.
Now, President Trump has suffocated the immigration flow even more dramatically, boldly solidifying US policy with measures that many critics, particularly those on the left, have not addressed the underlying causes of immigration, and have deemed politically impossible, legally unacceptable, and ultimately ineffective.
“The whole migration paradigm is changing,” says Eunice Rendon, coordinator of the Immigration Agenda, a coalition of Mexican advocacy groups. She added, “Families are horrifying,” citing Trump’s set of policies and his threat to target immigration.
Trump has adopted several hardline tactics at the same time. Stop asylum indefinitely for those seeking evacuation to the United States through the southern border. Deploying troops to hunt, and perhaps importantly, scaring border matings. Deportation flights widely publicize that immigrants will be sent home under bondage. And, like Mexico, the powerful governments of Latin America, do more to curb migration.
The new approach has provided eye-opening statistics.
In February, the US Border Patrol said it had arrested 8,347 people trying to illegally cross the border from a record high of over 225,000 in December 2023.
These figures have already fallen sharply since the Biden administration announced immigration restrictions last year. Biden took office in December, and the Border Patrol arrested 47,330 immigrants on the US-Mexico border.
With 1,527 immigrants per day, this was the lowest daily average for any month across the Biden presidency. But it was five times the number in February, the first month since Trump took office.
If that trend holds for the whole year, the uncertainty of US immigrants could fall to invisible levels from around 1967.
There are also indications that numbers are plummeting further south in the area. According to the Panama Immigration Institute, the number of people trying to arrive in the United States through the Dallin gap has reduced Central America, which connects South and Central America, from 408, a barometer of future pressure, to 408.
This shift has caused celebrations among those who have been seeking more stringent restrictions for years.
Under Biden, “White House leaders have promoted a narrative of impotence when it comes to immigration,” said Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, former deputy deputy homeland security secretary of the first Trump administration.
“It’s easy to secure a border if you’re willing to do that,” said Kuccinelli, a well-known hawk on immigration. “In the first Trump administration, Trump had no intention of doing that,” he argued. “But he’s doing that now.”
Trump’s hardened stance on immigration is, in a sense, an extension of Biden’s move at the end of his term. Biden was promoting a low-regulated policy that inflated the number of immigrants entering the United States during his first three years of office.
But as the backlash against the surge grew, Biden illegally swapped asylum for immigrants, pressured the governments in Mexico and Panama to do more to curb the flow of immigration, providing his successors with a relatively mild situation at the border.
The political sentiment in the United States has also changed. Leaders who once defended the city as an immigrant sanctuary have quieted resistance to Trump’s policies. And some Democrat governors have highlighted areas of potential cooperation in immigration enforcement.
Upon taking office in January, Trump advanced his anti-immigration measures. They included using a US military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to retain immigrants. Fire online posts to interfere and threaten potential immigrants. He then vowed to cancel his visa for foreigners who were thought to promote illegal immigration to the United States.
Still, there are plenty of warnings. A similar lull in the migration at the start of Trump’s first term has proven to be temporary, although not more sharp than the current decline. Immigration experts warn that sanctions and other measures targeting two large sources of migration, Venezuela and Cuba, could exacerbate the economic situation of these countries and create new departures.
The Trump administration’s tariff embrace is also weighted on the region’s larger economy, and could strengthen economic despair among poor families, a major factor affecting migration. Economists fear uncertainty about tariffs may have already driven Mexico into a recession.
However, Mexico’s ground development demonstrates how the dynamics of the transition are changing.
On a recent morning, hundreds of migrants lined up in the burnt sun outside the Mexico City office of COMAR, the country’s refugee agency.
Since the crack at dawn, many people have been in line, others have been camping outside the building, sleeping in the middle of sidewalks and dirt roads, wanting to get bookings and increase the likelihood of starting the asylum process.
“Obviously, staying here wasn’t our plan,” said Peter Martinez, an immigrant from Cuba.
Given the struggle, he was asked if he was planning to return to Cuba, and said, “Mexico can be dangerous and difficult, but it’s still better than returning to our country.”
Many immigrants, like Martinez, are stuck in Mexico and are rethinking their intersection with the US. I’m also planning on putting stocks in Mexico, but others are doing everything they can to get home.
The number of migrants seeking to return to Mexico’s country rose to 2,862 in January and February, according to the International Organization for Immigration.
A January survey of more than 600 immigrants by the International Rescue Committee found that 44% of respondents who were originally intended to arrive in the United States are currently planning to stay in Mexico.
“They’re the first to come to terms with the world,” said Rafael Velázquez Garcia, former director of the International Rescue Committee Office in Mexico.
The decision does not come without restrictions, including immigrants facing serious obstacles to accessing employment.
In other countries in the region, immigrants from Venezuela and other countries automatically receive humanitarian visas that allow them to look for jobs. But in Mexico, the only option for immigration is to request asylum.
All of this is unfolding before other hardline steps Trump defends. He also plans to evoke the unclear American law, the alien enemy law of 1798, providing little or no procedure for them, while accelerating the deportation of undocumented immigrants.
Immigration experts say that anger over the influx of Mexican workers is closest to the current crackdown date in the 1950s, when the “wet-back operation” was created.
“We need to go back to the Eisenhower administration to see things like this,” said Isaxon, an immigration expert.
