CIUDAD JUÁREZ - Mega shelters for deportees set up by the Mexican government along the border sit mostly empty, one month after President Donald Trump threatened “mass deportations” on Day 1.
The scenes here and other border cities from Reynosa to Tijuana underscore the setbacks, thus far, of Trump’s campaign promise to launch the largest deportation operation in U.S. history targeting an estimated 11 million undocumented persons.
Mexican officials along the border, including here in Ciudad Juárez, appear relieved they haven’t seen a swell of deportees, yet.
“We hope there won’t be a large repatriation,” said Secretary of Welfare Ariadna Montiel Reyes, following a tour of a sprawling, empty tent camp that can potentially hold 2,500 deportees. The federal agency is in charge of providing services for Mexicans returned to their home country in a process often called repatriation.
So far, about 2,000 Mexican migrants have set foot in government-operated shelters, said Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum at her recent daily press conference. Overall, more than 13,455 migrants have been deported to Mexico, according to Sheinbaum. Among them in a noteworthy negotiation: More than 2,970 migrants from countries other than Mexico, including Cuba and Venezuela, Mexican officials say.
The numbers of deportees sent to Mexico in the last month were higher than the last four weeks under of President Joe Biden's administration, said Ariel G. Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.
Deportations have since stabilized, if not actually fallen from the first 10 days of the Trump administration, said Ruiz Soto, who has examined data from both the U.S. and Mexico. “That has a lot to do with the real challenges that ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is facing with limited capacity in the interior,” he said, referring to detention space.
ICE officials have long told Congress the agency doesn't have enough funding to detain all the undocumented immigrants that Trump has promised to arrest. Border Czar Tom Homan told CNN Sunday, “I’m not I'm not happy with the numbers, because we got a lot of criminals to find. So what we're talking about right now is increasing the number of teams, (increasing) the targeting…We got to do more."
ICE, U.S. Customs and Border Protection or CBP and the Department of Defense didn’t respond to inquiries.
NOGALES
In Nogales, across from Nogales, Arizona, shelters remain empty or house just a few migrants, said Alma Cota de Yañez, the executive director of Fundación Empresarial Sonorense or FESAC, a nonprofit organization focused on immigrant assistance and border development. “We’re not seeing any chaos in our community,” said Cota de Yañez at a meeting of philanthropic organizations in Mexico City.
Just the same, worries remain with U.S.-Mexico history as a guide. Between 1929 and 1939, about 1 million Mexicans and their U.S.-born children were deported in the so-called “great repatriation,” according to historians in the book “Decade of Betrayal.” In 1954, the U.S. government deported an estimated hundreds of thousands and their U.S.-born children, in what was known by the racist name as Operation Wetback. Both operations generated widespread fear and anxiety in the streets of cities, especially those with large Latino populations.
Decades later, the wounds of humiliation remain open, raw, on both sides of the border. For that reason, Mexico is taking no chances — in emotion and practical execution. “México te abraza,” Mexico Embraces You, is the federal government’s name for the humanitarian response campaign to help Mexicans deported to their home countries.
At the massive Juárez "reception center" and temporary shelter, mattresses are stacked high inside facility. Outside there are rows of portable bathrooms.
A larger-than-life statue of immigrant defender Catholic Pope Francis, with an outstretched hand releasing a dove, overlooks the tent facility. The Pope celebrated a border mass in 2016 on the spot near the banks of the windswept banks of the Rio Grande.
TIJUANA
In downtown Tijuana, another temporary shelter has sprouted with bunk beds, showers, and a kitchen for migrant stays of just one or two days. The shelter carries the name: Juventud 2000.
The shelters’ residents share something whether in the state of Baja California, Chihuahua or Tamaulipas: migrants with no options to gain asylum in the U.S. or lawful U.S. entry with the now-defunct CBP One mobile phone app.
Some Mexican migrants said they would remain in Tijuana, banking on a reversal of Trump’s policies. That’s deepening concerns about overwhelming border communities in the coming weeks and months. The Sheinbaum government is handing out $97 debit cards to encourage migrants to return to hometowns in the interior of the country.
Consider Matías Ezequiel, 35. "Our hope ended when Trump took office, but we are from Puebla, and there is a lot of violence there,” he said. “My children were threatened — we are definitely not going back."
Some migrants will opt to jump the wall in Tijuana, or take a speed boat through water, migrants said. Others use mountain routes through the nearby city of Tecate to the east. Some use other people’s visas to cross through immigration checkpoints.
In Tijuana, the prices charged by coyotes have doubled, according to migrants. The cost for these crossings ranges from $6,000 to $10,000, a doubling of fees. But coyotes scramble for business in other cities, including Ciudad Juárez where prices have dropped due to falling demand, said humanitarian workers at migrant nonprofits.
REYNOSA
Similarly, in Reynosa, migrants have retreated to shelters or are sleeping on the streets. In Senda de Vida 2, one of the city’s largest private shelters, around 100 people live in limbo, though about 2,000 persons can fit there.
At Casa del Migrante Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, a smaller private shelter, Mexican nationals, deported after ICE raids in last couple weeks, have sought refuge there. About 160 or so migrants, mostly Mexicans worried about security in their home states, currently shelter behind heavy doors at the compound.
“The people that are there, what else are they gonna do?” said Kevin McNamara, the executive director of 13:2 Initiative, a Texas-based organization that distributes donations to shelters.
“Maybe they're holding onto some hope that something might work out, but probably it's going to be 4 years before there's any significant pathways,” he said.
DEL RIO
Ironically, the only large-scale arrival of newcomers on the border appears to be the hundreds of military troops on both sides. Sheinbaum sent an additional 10,000 national guard troops to Mexican border states. Some join members of the Mexican military to search for clandestine tunnels used by smugglers. They're also inspecting U.S. bound vehicles for fentanyl, fueled by Trump’s threats of imposing 25% tariffs on Mexican imports in March if that country and Canada did not do more to stop the flow of the deadly drug.
On the U.S. side, the Trump administration has deployed 1,500 additional troops adding to the 2,500 that were on the southern border supporting U.S. Border Patrol with monitoring duties.
In Del Rio, some U.S. military members in hotels already crammed with Texas state troopers, have some locals perplexed in border cities considered among the safest in the United States.
“Just as a community member, I'm not seeing them in their military uniforms,” said Tiffany Burrow, who runs the nonprofit Val Verde Humanitarian Border Coalition. “I'm seeing them off duty, walking up and down our Main Street, going to Chick-Fil-A, or Whataburger.” She said the flow of migrants seeking help dived from about 89 per day in early January to zero.
EL PASO
Along this stretch of border where economic and cultural ties bind sister cities, nerves are frayed and there's confusion. In El Paso County more than 80% of the 950,000 residents are Latino and there's growing concern anyone is subject to scrutiny by immigration agents.
A recent video posted on social media shows agents wearing vests with the U.S. Border Patrol logo asking a group of English-speaking young men at a horse training facility about their citizenship. One armed agent repeatedly demanded proof.
“I’m a U.S. citizen, just to clarify, born in El Paso, Texas,” the young man answered.
U.S. Border Patrol would not comment on the video, citing an investigation. But Border Patrol agent Orlando Marrero-Rubio said agents “are not randomly asking people for immigration papers.” Anti-smuggling and intelligence units carry out targeted enforcement involving a specific suspect and have a warrant, he said.
The video and people present when the agents arrived suggest otherwise. They say the men never displayed a warrant to enter private property. At the horse stables, a worker named Ventura, who declined to provide his last name, summed up his emotions in Spanish about the experience with immigration agents as he stood among the horse stables and corrals.
"We're very sad. We feel corralled."
Editor’s note: This story was edited by Dianne Solis and co-published with KTEP News in partnership with Puente News Collaborative, a bilingual nonprofit newsroom, convener and funder dedicated to high-quality, fact-based news and information from the U.S.-Mexico border.
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