MEXICO CITY (AP) — Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election immediately changed the calculus for millions of migrants or potential migrants around the world.
But perhaps not in the way Trump imagined.
Trump has promised to reduce immigration. But reducing already limited legal routes to the U.S. will only cause migrants to recalibrate their plans and resort to hiring smugglers in greater numbers, experts say.
In many cases, this means turning to organized crime groups that increasingly profit from migrant smuggling.
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Those potentially affected come from dozens of countries and many have already sold their homes and belongings to finance the journey.
Venezuelans continue to reach the U.S. southern border in smaller but still large numbers. Mexicans were responsible for half of US Border Patrol arrests in September. Chinese come via Ecuador and make their way through America. Senegalese buy multi-stop flights to Nicaragua and then move north.
The UN International Organization for Migration estimates that there are approximately 281 million international migrants in the world, or 3.6 percent of the world’s population. According to the annual report, more and more people will be displaced for political, economic and violent reasons, and more and more migrants will seek asylum. It warns that when people can’t find regular routes, they look for “irregular channels that are extremely dangerous.”
During Trump’s first administration, Mexican border towns were saturated with migrants. Cartels targeted them by kidnapping them, extorting their families for ransom and forcibly recruiting them into their ranks. Hundreds of people arrived every day, and thousands waited through the potentially years-long U.S. asylum application process in Mexico.
A US program called CBP One brought some order after it was introduced by the Biden administration in early 2023. Migrants no longer have to come to the border to make an appointment and can do so on their smartphone. The overcrowded border shelters once emptied and many families are doing everything they can to take the legal route.
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Trump has promised to end CBP One. He also wants to limit refugee resettlement again and warned of mass deportations during his campaign.
While his victory was deflating and troubling for those heading to the United States, it was not a dealbreaker.
On Tuesday evening, Bárbara Rodríguez, a 33-year-old Venezuelan, had to sleep after walking more than eight miles through the tropical heat of southern Mexico with some 2,500 others from at least a dozen countries.
Instead, she looked at the US election results on her phone.
Back in Caracas, Rodríguez helped monitor an opposition polling station during Venezuela’s July elections. After President Nicolas Maduro claimed re-election, his supporters began harassing her family.
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“Either my family’s lives would be in danger or I would have to leave the country,” she said. In September she sold her house and left her three children with her mother.
Now her plan to wait for a CBP One appointment to seek asylum at the U.S. border has an expiration date.
“Plans changed. We have until January 20,” she said, referring to Inauguration Day. She has not ruled out hiring a smuggler, she added.
Martha Bárcena, the former U.S. ambassador to Mexico during most of Trump’s first administration, said migrants were the losers of his immigration policies and that this could happen again.
“Organized crime is the major beneficiary because revenues from illegal human trafficking already equal or exceed revenues from drugs,” she said.
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Estefanía Ramos of Guatemala woke up worried Wednesday in a shelter in Ciudad Juarez across from El Paso, Texas.
“We’re trying to figure out what’s going to happen to us,” the 19-year-old said. “This wasn’t the plan.”
She and her husband left Guatemala after a gang threatened to harm him and kidnap her, she said. They have been waiting for a CBP One appointment for three months. Two months ago they had a daughter.
“If we can continue to wait for an appointment, we will,” Ramos said, adding that she did not want to risk an illegal crossing with the baby.
On Wednesday, several dozen asylum seekers with an appointment waited patiently in Ciudad Juarez until they were called across the international bridge.
Gretchen Kuhner, director of IMUMI, a nongovernmental legal services organization in Mexico, was in the southern Mexican city of Tuxtla Gutierrez last week, where she found migrant families with young children living on the streets, waiting for CBP One appointments.
“They have their cell phones charged every day at a makeshift spot on the street so they can check their CBP One appointments … while breastfeeding and sleeping in a tent with no water,” she said.
“People who need protection are really trying to do it the right way.”
Further restrictions on the already difficult process would leave vulnerable populations with few options, said Mark Hetfield, CEO of the US-based refugee aid organization HIAS.
“It would mean that they have nowhere to go because there are many, many countries in the hemisphere where there is essentially no asylum system or where even if you could get asylum, you are not necessarily safe,” he said.
And then there is the specter of mass deportations. Trump has made a similar threat before to no avail, but there is real concern.
Deportations to countries such as Cuba and Venezuela could be complicated by icy relations, although Venezuela’s Maduro issued a conciliatory message on Wednesday congratulating Trump. Advocates in Haiti demanded on Thursday that countries including the US halt deportations due to the country’s domestic crisis.
And no country will be more affected than Mexico. About 11 million Mexicans live in the US, about 5 million of whom do not have legal status. Mexicans sent home more than $63 billion in remittances last year, mostly from the United States. Mass deportations would rock the finances of millions of families and the Mexican economy would struggle to absorb them.
Migrant advocates and shelter directors in Mexico said they have heard of no government plans to deal with large numbers of deportees.
Mexican aid groups are “not in a position to accommodate so many people and let’s face it: it is civil society that is shouldering the bulk of the humanitarian response to those being deported or in transit,” says Rafael Velásquez García, Director Mexico. for the International Rescue Committee.
Mexico must prepare for all kinds of pressure from a Trump administration, said Carlos Pérez Ricart, professor of international relations at the Mexican public research center CIDE.
“What Mexico must accept is that our country will become a receiving country for migrants, whether they want it or not,” he said. “Trump is going to deport thousands, if not millions, of people and he is going to hinder the flow of migrants.”
Pesce reported from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. AP writer Juan Zamorano contributed from Panama City.