Migrants once headed for the US turn back and look south

The camp was so large that it was divided by streets and even neighborhoods. There was Las Vegas, Tijuana, Dubai, Havana... The migrants living there organized markets and parties. By dint of living together, they sometimes argued, but deep down they helped each other out, for they were all messengers of the same dream: to reach the United States. Seven or eight people slept in each tent as best they could. This camp in the border city of Reynosa (in Tamaulipas state, in northern Mexico), was named Río Camp due to its proximity to the Rio Grande, which is just a few feet away, and it once housed around a thousand migrants from Central America, South America and Africa. Today, no one remains. The timbers of what were once roofs, a communal kitchen, and a few huts are piled up on the abandoned land: signs of the existence of nomads who left their temporary home not long ago, like a recently extinguished campfire. Their footprints confirm their past, but give no clues as to their fate.

It seems clear that they failed to cross the border, sealed by Donald Trump the moment he became president of the United States on January 20. The Republican leader, who returned to power with an extreme hardline immigration policy, banned the entry of asylum seekers and triggered a hunt for undocumented immigrants. Thousands of migrants from Honduras, Venezuela, El Salvador and Cuba have now embarked on a reverse journey, returning to their countries of origin or to other cities within Mexico, which has ceased to be a transit point and has become a destination country, as evidenced by the increase in residency and work applications from citizens of other countries.

International organizations and non-profits are already reporting an unprecedented trend of north-south migration in the Americas. Migrant detentions in Mexico and at the U.S. border have plummeted to historic lows. Through the Darien Gap, counter-current crossings from Panama to Colombia are already being recorded, and migrants have begun to see Brazil and Chile as promising destinations, according to the United Nations. Trump’s policies, in short, have destroyed the migratory flow map as it was known until now. The paradigm shift is forcing humanitarian organizations to reorganize their efforts and raises the question of how organized crime will respond to the loss of the lucrative illicit business of migrant exploitation.

The shelters are now almost empty. Río Camp was an extension of the Senda de Vida camp, made up of three settlements in Reynosa. In Matamoros, an hour away, there is the Pumarejo shelter. Together, they sheltered 9,000 people at peak occupancy, during the Joseph Biden administration, according to estimates by Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which provides care to populations in transit in these shelters. Currently, according to the same organization, only about 250 people remain there.

Their stories echo in the emptiness. What they once needed, a little space, now devours them, in the tiresome routine of prolonged waiting. And what are they waiting for? A miracle, an unexpected turn of events, that one day Trump will allow entry into the United States to those who were stranded on the border when he shut down the CBP One app, which processed asylum applications. “Let’s see what surprise God has in store for us,” confides Yoni Civira, a 42-year-old Venezuelan who has lived in the Pumarejo camp since January. “Let’s see if President Trump touches his heart.”

Yoni has been in transit for five years after leaving Venezuela, with temporary stays here and there, accompanied by his children and wife. Along the way, his retina detached, and he lost sight in one eye, and he’s going blind in the other. He’s invested too much life to consider returning to his country, mired in a deep political and economic crisis. He clings to this place with the stubbornness of those who have risked everything. His fellow Venezuelan, Aimara Moreno, 40, struggles to recount everything she’s endured to get to this point, so close to a better future. “I’ve blocked out many things I don’t want to remember anymore. It was very hard,” she says, although it is clear how, despite everything, she’s sinking into the past.

Others have the memory of the atrocities burned into their memories. Hilda Meza, a 32-year-old Honduran woman, was kidnapped along with her husband and four children just after crossing the Suchiate River, which divides Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala. They were held for three days in a safe house in Chiapas, where there were about 100 other migrants. The armed hitmen, who could easily be from the Jalisco Cartel (CJNG) or the Sinaloa Cartel, “were drinking and doing drugs all the time,” she recalls. They were released after their families paid 1,000 pesos (US$54) for each family member from Honduras. Threats from the gangs prevent her from returning to her country. And even if she could, she says, she would be unable to retrace the same path.

Final destination: Mexico

The scenes of empty camps are replicated in Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, Pachuca, Mexico City and Tapachula. Migrants are practically not going north anymore. “Trump’s message was quite clear. Why would they take so much risk on this migration route if they’re going to reach a closed border?” reasons Emmanuelle Brique, deputy coordinator of MSF’s Northern Mexico Border Project. The figures confirm the new reality of migration. In Mexico, detentions of people in transit have fallen 80% between 2024 and 2025 (January-May period), dropping from 590,690 interceptions to 113,612, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior. The reduction has been more noticeable this year. While 63,457 migrants were detained in January, in May there were only 5,123 (a decrease of 92%).

On the U.S. side, reports from the Border Patrol (CBP) show the same downward trend: while 905,920 migrants were detained along the border with Mexico in the period from January to May 2024, 108,658 were intercepted in 2025, a drop of 88%; in May alone, apprehensions fell to 12,452. Meanwhile, data from the Panamanian government on crossings through the Darién jungle show an even more dramatic reduction—98%—in the same reference period: from 170,014 migrants recorded in 2024 to 2,917 this year. In May, there were just 13 crossings.

In fact, the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) has begun documenting the reverse exodus across the Darién Gap: 7,696 people (one-third women) have retraced their steps between February and May, twice as many as crossed the jungle northward in the first half of the year. This is saying something, since the Darién is feared for the traps its wilderness contains, both natural and man-made. Many of those unwilling to undertake the return journey have decided to stay in Mexico. According to a comparative analysis by the IOM based on surveys, while seven out of 10 migrants stated that the United States was their final destination in 2024, this year that figure has dropped to five out of 10; at the same time, the number of those who see Mexico as a final destination doubled in the same period, from 24% to 46%.

The UN has recorded an increase in immigration procedures filed by people in transit to formally stay and work in Mexico. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reports that the country receives 250 asylum and refugee applications every day, almost as many as in 2024. “There is much talk about the decrease in the flow of foreigners arriving in Mexico, which is true, but we also see that the number of asylum seekers has not decreased proportionally,” said the agency’s representative in Mexico, Giovanni Lepri, a few weeks ago.

The IOM reports that three out of four migrants have no intention of returning to their country of origin. Many of them are already planning a long stay in Mexico. For example, men are rarely seen in the shelters in Tamaulipas in the mornings, as they leave to look for work in the cities of Reynosa or Matamoros. Some have found temporary jobs in construction or markets. In Senda de Vida and Pumarejo, only women and children remain, already enrolled in nearby schools, thus mitigating the learning loss resulting from living on the move.

Down south in Tapachula (Chiapas), the largest point of irregular crossings into Mexico along the southern border, a banana company has just hired 60 migrants, thanks to the mediation of Herbert Bermúdez, head of the Jesús El Buen Pastor shelter. The only requirement is that the new workers have processed their temporary or permanent permit with Mexican immigration authorities. “These people who have already looked for permanent employment are definitely staying,” says Bermúdez.

The pay for their work is 300 pesos for an eight-hour day, above the minimum wage in Mexico. The company also registered the migrants with social security and provided them with food. Naturally, these workers pay taxes. This salary allows them to send remittances to their families in their countries of origin. They didn’t have to go to the United States to achieve this. “These are people who just want to work properly,” Bermúdez sums up.

Becoming invisible

The fact that populations are migrating less doesn’t mean that the structural causes forcing them to leave their countries have disappeared. Mavi Cruz, director of the Fray Matías Human Rights Center in Tapachula, warns that the idea that “there are no more migrants” hides the danger of “making invisible” those who have been stranded in different regions along their journey. “When migration control policies become more restrictive, people lose their ability to move, cannot continue their migration plans, and are faced with other types of decisions, such as staying longer in other places,” she explains.

Fernanda Acevedo, coordinator of the Hospitality and Solidarity shelter in the same city in Chiapas, warns that, faced with mobility restrictions, migrants are seeking “more invisible and more dangerous routes.” “Because people will continue to move. The need to save lives sometimes means being invisible—even more so—and this can lead to a further increase in human trafficking at the hands of organized crime,” she emphasizes. How the reduction in migratory flow will change the role of cartels is a mystery that worries international agencies. Mexican authorities have well documented the lucrative branch of the criminal economy based on the bodies of migrants, whom the cartels extort, kidnap, or use as mules.

“The greater the control, the greater the risk for migrants. They seek more hidden routes, often more dangerous, more expensive, and therefore the coyotes charge more,” says Jeremy MacGillivray, deputy head of the IOM in Mexico. While before the border closure, smugglers charged migrants $5,000 with the promise of getting them into the United States, now the rates range between $12,000 and $15,000 per person, according to MSF’s findings through interviews at the camps.

A UN official, who requested anonymity because he was unauthorized, raises the possibility that cartels will now begin to unload the illicit business they had with migrants onto local populations in Mexico. “One of the main impacts of the change in administration in the U.S. is that, as migrant trafficking decreased, the recruitment of Mexicans by organized crime, extortion, and drug trafficking increased. And we are seeing it,” the international official observes.

The same UN representative shares that humanitarian agencies have had to rethink their strategies to assist a fleeing population. “No one is clear about the new scenario, in which state the most foreigners are staying, or what routes they are taking from the U.S. border to Guatemala. It’s a nebulous situation. This makes the response we had no longer relevant, because there are no more people and we don’t have clear data; we don’t know where to go, where to deliver aid,” he notes.

For this reason, MSF’s teams of doctors and social workers have decided to become mobile and make occasional visits to sites where they find small groups of migrants. They have also had to take more drastic decisions, such as closing their care center in Danlí, Honduras, which they operated for four years, “due to the decrease in migratory flow,” as they reported a few days ago. The shelters are also beginning to feel the loss of donations they routinely received to operate, in a situation where, without people in need, they are losing resources. The Jesús El Buen Pastor camp, for example, has not been able to raise enough money to pay its June electricity bill.

Specialists and shelter managers are certain that this circumstance is temporary, that migration will once again find its way north, like water through rocks. “It’s very difficult to break the migrant’s mindset of crossing into the United States,” says Ángela Gómez, one of the managers of Senda de Vida. The shelter’s director, Héctor Silva, a Christian pastor, defines migratory movements as waves: for the moment, there is a retreat, not a renunciation. Migrants, he says, are like snails that hide and remain still, waiting for an opportunity. Then comes the returning tide of the sea.

Pastor Héctor, as he is known, officiates mass for the faithful in the chapel inside the shelter, comforting their battered spirits. “I have to give them hope; I can’t tell them to go back to their countries,” he explains. “I tell them to trust in God, that for God there are no borders.” The pastor asks them to close their eyes and search their hearts. Do they see it? Do they see that door? Go to it, cross it, he asks. And they do. They smile.

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