Migrants are disappointed after Trump closed the border in front of them

After US President Donald Trump announced the closure of the border, there is no longer anyone from the immigrants coming from Latin America, only a few are walking in the other direction. For them, the American dream ended, and they are now returning to their homes, if they were already able to get there.

The small family

An hour after sunrise one day last month, Dan Venezuelan, their three young children, grabbed their hands, and they walked towards them towards the border, they were wearing suitable clothes for hard travel, long shoes, small backpacks and water bottles.

Children were calm, as they were used to such a journey as they directed the American border before.

“We came here five months ago, crossed the borders, and we measured the situation on the American border, and security problems in Mexico,” says their mother, Lucia.

Half a year after they traveled 1700 miles from their home in Venezuela to Mexico, they are now making the same trip in the opposite direction, through Central America, where the “cartals” (drug gangs and organized crime) migrants hunt, kidnap and blackmail them, and they are walking through the “Darren” forest in Panama over the decomposing bodies of those who died on the way.

“I am terrified about it, but we have no choice,” says Lucia in astonishment.

This family is part of a small number of families, but it is increasing from people returning to their homes, after they lost hope to reach the United States.

After three years in which the American authorities scored a record number, seven million “interviews” for migrants on the southern border, which is an approximate scale for the number of people trying to cross, reflect their stories of disappointment in their inability to enter America and live in it, and they are preparing to return to their homes, where the strict border policies in history began to leave their mark, and the news spread from Nicaragua to Brazil and Chile: The United is closed.

Voluntary

At the beginning of last month, the International Organization for Migration, which organizes “voluntary return” trips, all over the world, reported the high requests for help to return to Latin America and the Caribbean region, noting that many other immigrants are not counted, because they return to their old lives without notifying the authorities.

Also, others start his work from (zero) again, after he sold everything to finance the trip to the United States.

In his office in “Tawasola”, 10 miles from the crossing point in “Talisman”, the Honduras Consul, Samuel Gallo, said that “from the day after the Trump inauguration, he has arranged for the return of 438 Honduras in this border city to their homes, in buses paid by the Mexican government.”

Many immigrants were waiting for a date for the interview with the Customs and Border Security Administration, a program that the former US President’s administration, Joe Biden, allows migrants to seek asylum in the United States, at a specific time and place, at the official border crossing points.

But Trump canceled the program, and issued an executive order to close the southern border of the United States, in front of the immigrants who accused them of “invasion”, and the border is now closed to all asylum seekers.

Trump also stopped the “resettlement” program, which has lasted for decades, which is home to refugees in the United States who were examined abroad, a decision that US courts are considering.

The reputation of migrants

Last week, a federal judge issued a judicial order ordering Trump to cancel the order to stop the program, and it is not clear whether the administration would comply with this judicial order, and international organizations and immigration analysts estimate that more than 200,000 immigrants, most of whom were not Mexicans, were on their way to the United States, when Trump canceled the interview dates with the Customs and Border Security Administration.

“It was like a bucket of cold water on the head in relation to Honduras stranded in (Tawasola).”

He added, “Most of them realized that they could not enter the United States, and they came to themselves here for the voluntary return.” He expressed regret, to discredit migrants by Trump, but he admits that the action taken was effective, indicating that people would think several times before leaving their countries of origin now.

Indictment

“The decisions that resulted in the decrease in the number of migrants on the border, are in fact an indictment of the previous policies of American presidents over the past three years, they could have done so at any time, but they chose not to do anything,” said Mark Kricorian, the executive director of the Immigration Studies Center, who supports Trump’s border policies, and defends stricter controls for immigration.

Last year, the Biden administration also intensified the deportations, as it deported more than a quarter of a million people from the United States, or nearly twice their number in 2023.

During his presidential campaign, Trump pledged “the largest deportation” in the history of the United States, for immigrants. This campaign has not yet been fulfilled, which clearly raised his administration, due to the fact that the responsible agency “is still working in the same extent of the resources it had before,” says the official in the field of border and immigration in the Washington Office of Latin America, Adam Isaacon.

As the numbers of migrants heading to the United States continued, the journey has become more hostile to the few who succeed in this.

American dream

The director of the “Tawasola” migration center, Herber Bermeuds, said that a few months ago he was 1,700 people, but now they number 150 people, most of them tried to go north, and left the last batch of them on January 20, and some of them returned.

He added: “The army and the military have been here since January 20, if you want to go north, it will be difficult for you … they will prevent you.”

He pointed out that some Venezuelans, Cubans, and Nicaraguans are thinking about staying in Mexico, while most others say that it does not make sense to stay here, because they came for the American dream. About the London “Times”

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blackmail

Father, Hyman Vasquez Midina, along with the river that divides Mexico and Guatemala, reviewed the “cartridges” strategies that blackmail migrants who are still crossing the border.

Medina said: “There was a period of conquest in which the immigrants were, where they were coming here through the river, and (Cartes) was waiting for them, and they were receiving 1,000 peso (equivalent to 40 pounds), to cross, and if they were not lucky, they take them to a nearby farm and hold them there, and call their families to pay 700 dollars to release them.”

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Migrants in trouble

Migrants return to their countries after the Trump deportation campaign. From the source

In a hotel on the outskirts of the city, a group of 20 Vietnami was speaking on their phones, smoking cigarettes, and drinking “Coca -Cola”. They had arrived 10 days ago on a trip from China to Guatemala, and from there they traveled north to Tawasola, and then they realized that they were in trouble.

None of them spoke a single word in Spanish or English, but rather they were communicating with others instead through a translation application on their phones.

One of them, a young man carrying a tattoo on his arms, wrote: “We cannot return to the house, I think that if you close the border, we will be homeless.”

She wrote a young child, who has a sentence on her phone and raised her: “I will return tonight.”

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Tales of immigrants

Sonia (23 years old) and her sister Eileen (16 years old) were hoping to reach New Orleans with their mother and four other relatives of Honduras, when they heard, on January 20, that the date of the interview with the Customs Administration and the Security of the American Border, scheduled for a few days, was canceled.

“We were crying, it was terrifying,” said Sonia.

Emmanuel Amuh (43 years old), an electrical engineer from Accra, is one of the few who stayed in Mexico, where he says that he fled from Ghana after he was persecuted, and he paid more than $ 3500 to reach this point, after he boarded flights and buses, and he walked long distances through the forest, and was stolen three times on the road, including his passport.

He believes that he will not be able to reach the United States, and instead he seeks to obtain asylum in Mexico, expressing his hope that American policy will change in the future.

. The International Organization for Migration confirmed the high requests for help to return to Latin America and the Caribbean.

. Trump pledged in his presidential campaign “the largest deportation” in the history of the United States for immigrants.