In northern Mexico, migrants who abandoned plans to head for the US border after President Donald Trump returned to the White House are stuck panhandling on the streets and getting gouged by greedy locals taking advantage of their desperation.
Erick López and his family are among the dwindling number of migrants making the trek north
They left their home in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa in hopes of crossing into America, but are now stranded in the the town of Torreón, more than 300 miles from the US border.
‘At first the idea was to cross to the other side, but when things got worse with Donald Trump, we decided to stay because I came with my wife and [three] children,’ López told Milenio.
To support his family, López camps out in the city with his two oldest children, begging for money on the street.
His wife remains with their youngest child, a baby, at a residence in neighboring Gómez Palacio, whose owner has to let them stay there because he had nobody to look after the property.
Irma Valles has also noticed a reduction in migrants in the town, with food going unserved at the soup kitchen where she works.
She said locals have taken advantage of the migrant population by charging them $1.50 to charge their cell phones or as much as $2.50 to shower.
Several cities in northern Mexico have seen major drops in migrant arrivals since Trump’s return.
The city of Torreón in the Comarca Lagunera region, which experienced a 95 to 97 percent drop in migrants from the south trying to reach the US toward the end of 2024
A migrant plays with her child at a shelter in Piedras Negras in the state of Coahuila on Saturday
The Comarca Lagunera region, which consists of five cities in the state of Coahuila and 10 in the state of Durango, experienced a 95 to 97 percent drop in migrants from the south trying to reach the US toward the end of last year, Milenio reported.
During the first couple of months of 2024, officials normally encountered groups of up to 800 migrants passing through the area, said Raul Meraz, undersecretary for the region.
Meraz recalled that the biggest group in December – the month after Trump was elected on a platform of strict border security and the deportation of illegal migrants – consisted of 120 migrants.
The group was spotted at an out-of-service train station in Gómez Palacio, and received assistance from multiple government agencies.
María Martínez, coordinating director of the Jesus Torres Fraire Day Center for Migrants in Torreón, said the site normally allows migrants to stay for a couple of nights.
But that has changed as migrants fear being detained by Mexico’s National Guard.
‘…[W]e think that what they are trying to do now is obtain a legal stay,’ Martínez told Milenio.
She attributed to the slowdown in migrant arrivals to the increased presence of the military.
Asylum seekers, who had appointments made through the U.S. Customs and Border Protection CBP One application, waited outside the National Institute of Migration in Piedras Negras
Honduran national Isai Mendez, 13, spent 13 months with his mother and sister waiting for an asylum appointment and were notified on January 21, the day after Donald Trump was inaugurated, that their appointment had been cancelled
‘They no longer want to try and are giving themselves up,’ she said. ‘The migratory flow is changing. If we have eight migrants, there are shelters that don’t have even one and you wonder, what is happening, why do people keep leaving their countries?’
Immigration figures provided by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection showed that there were 61,465 interdictions of migrants attempting to cross the border last month, a sharp decrease from December 2024, when 96,048 incidents were registered.
Data showed that in the three weeks before Trump took office, at least 2,000 apprehensions were reported daily.
In comparison, an average of 786 migrant interdictions were reported following his return to the White House.
According to data obtained by DailyMail.com from Mexico’s National Institute of Migration, 12,254 Mexicans and 3,334 people of other nationalities have been deported to Mexico from the U.S. since Trump took office.
