MEXICO CITY (news agencies) — Donald Trump’s victory in the United States presidential election instantly changed calculations for millions of migrants or potential migrants across the globe.
But perhaps not in the way Trump imagined.
Trump has pledged to reduce immigration. But by narrowing the already limited legal pathways into the U.S., migrants will just recalibrate their plans and resort in greater numbers to hiring smugglers, experts say.
In many cases that will mean turning to organized crime groups that increasingly profit from migrant smuggling.
Those potentially affected come from dozens of countries and many have already sold their homes and their possessions to fund the trip.
Venezuelans continue arriving at the U.S. southern border in reduced, but still large numbers. Mexicans made up half of U.S. Border Patrol arrests in September. Chinese come through Ecuador and make their way up through the Americas. Senegalese buy multi-stop flights to Nicaragua, then move north.
The U.N.’s International Organization for Migration estimates there are around 281 million international migrants in the world, or 3.6% of the global population. An increasing number of people will be displaced for political, economic and violence reasons, and more migrants will seek asylum, according to its annual report. It warns that when people cannot find regular pathways, they start looking for “irregular channels that are extremely hazardous.”
During Trump’s first administration, Mexican border cities were saturated with migrants. Cartels preyed on them, kidnapping them, extorting their families for ransoms and forcibly recruiting them into their ranks. There were hundreds of arrivals every day, as well as thousands who were made to wait out the potentially yearslong U.S. asylum application process in Mexico.
A U.S. 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 schedule an appointment and can do it on their smartphones. Once overflowing border shelters have emptied and many families are making every effort to go the legal route.
Trump has pledged to end CBP One. He also wants to again restrict refugee resettlement and warned throughout his campaign of mass deportations.
While his victory was deflating and worrisome to those en route to the United States, it was not a deal-breaker.
On Tuesday night, Bárbara Rodríguez, a 33-year-old Venezuelan, should have been sleeping after walking more than eight miles through southern Mexico’s tropical heat with some 2,500 others from at least a dozen countries.
Instead, she was watching U.S. election results on her cellphone.
Back in Caracas, Rodríguez helped monitor a polling place for the opposition during Venezuela’s July election. After President Nicolas Maduro claimed reelection, his supporters began to harass her family.
“Either my family’s lives were going to be at risk or I had to leave the country,” she said. In September, she sold her house and left her three children with her mother.
Now her plan of waiting for a CBP One appointment to request asylum at the U.S. border has an expiration date.
“Plans changed. We have until Jan. 20,” she said, referring to inauguration day. She has not ruled out hiring a smuggler, she added.
Martha Bárcena, Mexico’s former U.S. ambassador during most of Trump’s first administration, said migrants were the losers from his immigration policies and that could happen again.
“Organized crime is the big beneficiary, because the income from illegal human trafficking is already equal to or greater than the income from drugs,” she said.
Estefanía Ramos of Guatemala woke up worried Wednesday in a Ciudad Juarez shelter across from El Paso, Texas.
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