What Border Crisis? Mexican Migrant Shelters Are Quiet Ahead of Trump

Migrants used to gather by the hundreds in encampments in Ciudad Juárez, on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, waiting for a chance to cross into the United States. But as President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to take office on Monday, few people could be found this past week on the once-teeming embankments.

All that remained were extinguished campfires, discarded shoes, shirts and toothbrushes.

One Mexican city after another has reported a similar situation along the border with the United States, where the number of migrants has steadily dropped in recent months. The decline has been attributed largely to hardened restrictions introduced by the Biden administration and by Mexican and Panamanian officials meant to deter migration.

As President Biden came under increasing pressure during his re-election campaign to curb migration flows, he issued in June an executive order effectively blocking undocumented migrants from receiving asylum. That month, U.S. border officials recorded 83,532 illegal crossings, a significant drop from the previous month’s 117,905.

Despite the decline, illegal crossings remain higher than during much of Mr. Trump’s first term, fueling calls by the new Trump administration, and even by some Democrats in Congress, for more severe restrictions on migration to the United States.

Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, Mr. Trump’s pick to run the Homeland Security Department, told senators on Friday that she planned to reinstate a Trump-era policy forcing asylum seekers to stay in Mexico for the duration of their U.S. cases and reduce temporary immigration relief for people from countries experiencing unrest.

“Border security must remain a top priority,” Ms. Noem said.

Some officials in Latin America are pushing back, arguing that the tougher restrictions on both sides of the border have worked to stem the crisis.

“The flow of migration from the south of Mexico toward the border has diminished in the last few months,” said Enrique Serrano Escobar, who leads the Chihuahua State office responsible for receiving migrants. “There is no crisis,” he said of Ciudad Juárez. “There is no problem.”

The quieter border these days contrasts with the recent years of frequent tragedies along the frontier, including family separations and the 2023 fire at a migrant detention facility in Ciudad Juárez that killed dozens.

Thousands of migrants are still trying to make their way north even as the authorities on both sides of the border harden restrictions. But overall, movement through the Darién Gap, the inhospitable land bridge connecting North and South America, and shelter capacity in U.S.-Mexico border cities like Ciudad Juárez and Matamoros have become indicators of how migration flows are easing.

“Normally, we would have around 150,” said Lucio Torres, who has been overseeing a shelter in Nuevo Laredo, across the Rio Grande, for three years. The shelter has capacity for 300 people. This week, the facility housed only seven.

Mr. Serrano Escobar said that migrant shelters run by government and civic organizations in Ciudad Juárez, with capacity for about 3,000 migrants, are currently only about 40 percent full. “The city is calm,” he added.

In November, more than 46,000 people crossed the border illegally, the lowest number during the Biden administration. December saw more than 47,000 illegal crossings. By comparison, in December 2023, illegal crossings surpassed a record of roughly 250,000.

Mexican security forces said that they detained more than 475,000 migrants in the last quarter of 2024. That is nearly 68 percent more detentions compared with the same period a year earlier, according to government data.

Solsiree Petit, 44, a Venezuelan teacher in Ciudad Juárez, said she had tumors in her breasts that require surgery. She said her sons, 10 and 17, had turned themselves in to the U.S. authorities seeking asylum about a week ago. She said she had an appointment with U.S. Customs and Border Protection in El Paso to submit her own asylum application on Jan. 29.

She said she hoped that her appointment would still be honored under the Trump administration. “I prefer not to think otherwise about that,” she said, “because it depresses you more.”

CBP One, the phone app that Ms. Petit used to schedule her appointment, allowed U.S. immigration authorities to process nearly 44,000 migrants in December at ports of entry.

While the Biden administration created the app to incentivize migrants to avoid crossing into the country illegally, Ms. Noem, the Homeland Security nominee, said she would wind down use of the app, reflecting concerns among Republicans that it was used to allow migrants into the country who should be barred from entry.

Similar to the tense calm seen in Ciudad Juárez, the Pumarejo shelter in Matamoros, which can accommodate 1,500 people, currently has only 260, according to shelter officials. In Tijuana, three notable shelters indicated that they were only 50 percent full.

Shelters in Guatemala City have also all but emptied of migrants heading north, said Karina López, a social worker at the city’s Casa del Migrante shelter. Several years ago, the shelter struggled to care for more than 3,000 weary migrants with just over 100 beds. Those numbers are unheard-of today, Ms. López said. That is partly because people are staying only a few hours in their rush to get to the border before the inauguration, she said.

Fear of violent crime and extortion is also thought to be keeping some migrants away from shelters targeted by organized crime in Mexico. Instead of seeking refuge there, some are choosing to stay with acquaintances, in rented rooms or with their smugglers as they try to make their way to the border, legally or illegally.

“I don’t care if the devil himself is in my way, I’m going forward,” said Juan Hernández, a handyman from Honduras. Mr. Hernández, 45, said he had lived in the United States for 23 years and had been deported five times. He arrived six months ago in Monterrey, a major industrial hub in northeast Mexico, after being deported to Honduras following a conviction in North Carolina for drunken driving.

He said he planned to cross the border again soon in a bid to reunite with his two children living in Raleigh, N.C.

For now, migrants like Mr. Hernández appear to be a minority. Not long ago in the historic center of Guatemala City, the sidewalks were filled with people begging for spare change or a meal for their children, many of them draped in the Venezuelan flag. This week, they were mostly absent.

In the Darién Gap, the number of migrants fell sharply after the Panamanian government introduced tougher restrictions to complement the Biden administration’s new asylum policies.

Two years ago, boatloads of people trying to get to the jungle would leave every day from Necoclí, a Colombian beach town at the southern end of the jungle. Migrants would often photograph the boat journeys and share pictures on social media, where they came to symbolize the migrants’ last moments of safety before entering the perilous Darién Gap jungle.

Now, days go by when there are not enough migrants to fill a single boat. Instead, the boats are leaving every two or three days and not always full.

In August 2023, a record 80,000 migrants passed through the Darién in a single month. In December, just under 5,000 people went through, according to Panamanian officials.

Yet, as the Trump inauguration approaches, smugglers have continued to urge migrants to get to the border and avoid a potential crackdown. Fearing it could be their last chance to make their way to the United States, some have resorted to begging friends to loan them money or to turning over the deeds to their homes to smugglers as collateral, shelter operators say.

One option offered by smugglers and referred to by migrants as the “V.I.P. route” shuttles migrants from Guatemala to Cancún, Mexico, by land, and from Cancún to Ciudad Juárez by air using false Mexican passports, according to Ms. López, the social worker. The price of a one-way flight on this route peaked at around $450 this week.

After the inauguration, the price drops to about $100.

Reporting was contributed by Annie Correal from Guatemala City; Julie Turkewitz from Bogotá, Colombia; Chantal Flores from Monterrey, Mexico; Edyra Espriella from Matamoros, Mexico; Aline Corpus from Tijuana, Mexico; and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega and Rocío Gallegos from Mexico City.