EL PASO, TEXAS \u00a0\u2014\u00a0Juan Ort\u00edz trudged through 100-degree heat along the U.S.-Mexico border, weighed down by a backpack full of water bottles that he planned to leave for migrants trying to cross this rugged terrain.<\/p>\n
Only there hadn\u2019t been many migrants of late. <\/p>\n
When Ort\u00edz started water drops in this especially dangerous stretch of desert near El Paso nearly two years ago, he sometimes encountered dozens of people trying to reach the U.S. in a single afternoon. Now he rarely sees any. Border crossings began falling during the final months of President Biden\u2019s term, and have plunged to their lowest levels in decades under President Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s dramatically different,\u201d Ort\u00edz said, the desert silent except for the crunch of his footsteps in the sand and the whir of a Border Patrol helicopter overhead. \u201cMigrants no longer have any hope.\u201d<\/p>\n
These borderlands surrounding El Paso were long a place of risk but also opportunity. Migrants chasing the American dream crossed by the tens of thousands annually, sometimes dodging federal agents and often seeking them out to ask for asylum.<\/p>\n
But Trump\u2019s immigration crackdown \u2014 a total ban on asylum, a mass deportation campaign and the unprecedented militarization of the border \u2014 has altered life here in myriad ways. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Motorists drive into Mexico on Thursday at the Paso del Norte International Bridge, which links El Paso, Texas, with Ju\u00e1rez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. .<\/p>\n
Across the Rio Grande from El Paso in the Mexican city of Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, shelters once hummed with life, rich with the smell of cooked stews and the chatter of people plotting their passage to the U.S. <\/p>\n
Today those shelters are largely empty, populated by migrants stranded in Mexico when Trump took office, and others who were in the United States but decided to leave, spooked by policies designed to instill fear. <\/p>\n
Maikold Zapata, 22, had been one of the lucky ones. <\/p>\n
He entered the U.S. last year via CBP One, a government app that helped more than 900,000 migrants make asylum appointments at ports of entry. Zapata worked as a landscaper in El Paso, sending most of his earnings to his family back in Venezuela but occasionally splurging on a steak dinner or a visit to a water park with friends. <\/p>\n
What kept Zapata up at night was a looming court date for his immigration case.<\/p>\n
Since Trump took office, Zapata had heard about federal agents showing up even at routine immigration hearings and taking migrants away in handcuffs. He was afraid of being arrested and sent to a detention facility like the so-called Alligator Alcatraz in Florida, or to a far-away country \u2014 perhaps El Salvador or South Sudan, where authorities have shipped U.S. deportees in recent months. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Pastor Francisco Gonzalez Palacios, at the Albergue Vida shelter he runs in Ju\u00e1rez, says the number of migrants coming there has plummeted in recent months. <\/p>\n
\u201cImagine arriving in Africa with no documents and no money,\u201d Zapata said. \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
Missing his early July court date was also not an option, since the electronic bracelet on his wrist allowed immigration agents to track his location. <\/p>\n
So Zapata stuffed his few possessions in a backpack and walked south over the U.S.-Mexico border bridge, abandoning his asylum claim and the dream he had worked his way across two continents to achieve. He plans to return to South America, likely to Colombia, where his mother is living. \u201cI\u2019ll go back, working the whole way again.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A migrant holds her child at Oasis del Migrante, a small shelter for migrants in Ju\u00e1rez.<\/p>\n
For now he is living at Oasis de Migrante, a small shelter in downtown Ju\u00e1rez, where he has befriended another Venezuelan who made a similar choice. <\/p>\n
Richard Osorio, 35, decided to leave the U.S. after his husband landed in immigrant detention. Osorio, who worked in home care for the elderly, said it felt like only a matter of time before immigration agents captured him: \u201cI was filled with fear.\u201d <\/p>\n
He hopes that his partner\u2019s attorney can persuade the U.S. to deport the man to Mexico, and that he and Osorio can make a life there.<\/p>\n
The vast majority of migrants languishing along the border never made it to the United States. <\/p>\n
Eddy Lalvay got close. He was 17 when he and his 5-year-old nephew, Gael, arrived in Ju\u00e1rez last year. Originally from Ecuador, they were trying to reach New Jersey, where Gael\u2019s mother lives. <\/p>\n
But before they could cross, they were detained by Mexican authorities, who sent them to a government shelter for minors. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Eddy Lalvay, at the Albergue Vida shelter in Ju\u00e1rez, arrived at the border with his young nephew a year ago.<\/p>\n
Lalvay was released when he turned 18. But Gael remains in custody, where he recently turned 6, and authorities say they will release him only to a parent or a grandparent. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m trying to be strong, but I feel awful,\u201d Lalvay said on a recent afternoon as he sat at another shelter in a working-class neighborhood boxed in by sprawling industrial parks. <\/p>\n
Francisco Gonz\u00e1lez Palacios, a Christian pastor who runs the facility and leads a network of faith-based shelters, said the number of migrants housed by the network has dropped from 1,400 to 250 in recent months. \u201cNobody is coming from the south,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Some shelters and nonprofit groups providing legal or humanitarian assistance to migrants may have to close, he said, because many were indirectly funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Trump shuttered.<\/p>\n
He tells the migrants gathered at his shelter to rethink their goals now that their \u201cplan A\u201d \u2014 a life in the U.S. \u2014 is out of reach. <\/p>\n
\u201cLook for a plan B,\u201d he says. \u201cStay awhile, start to work. God will help you.\u201d<\/p>\n
But other Trump policies are hurting the economy in the region, limiting opportunities from migrants. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Migrants walk in the yard at Albergue Vida shelter in Ju\u00e1rez. <\/p>\n
Ju\u00e1rez has long drawn Mexicans from poorer parts of the country who come to work in its factories, which boomed under the North American Free Trade Agreement, churning out auto parts and other goods destined for the U.S. <\/p>\n
But Trump\u2019s on-again, off-again threats of tariffs on goods from Mexico have stunned industry in the Ju\u00e1rez area, with factories laying off thousands of workers. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in the middle of tremendous uncertainty,\u201d said Mar\u00eda Teresa Delgado Zarate, vice president of INDEX Ju\u00e1rez, a trade group. About 308,000 workers are employed in factories today, she said, down from 340,000 a few years ago. <\/p>\n
Mexican Juan Bustos, 52, recently lost his assembly line job making auto parts. Most days, he lines up at 6 a.m. outside factories that say they are hiring to try to get new work. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not easy like it was before,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
So much of life in Ju\u00e1rez depends on decisions made in Washington, he said. \u201cHe changes his mind minute to minute,\u201d Bustos said of Trump. \u201cWe\u2019re at his mercy.\u201d <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Viewed from the Mexican side of the international boundary, barbed wire marks the border dividing Mexico and the United States. <\/p>\n
On the U.S. side, industry is also reeling from the tariff uncertainty. <\/p>\n
Jerry Pacheco, who operates an industrial park in Santa Teresa, N.M., a few miles west of El Paso, said several companies that planned new projects there have pulled out since Trump took office. <\/p>\n
His park abuts a new militarized zone that stretches 200 miles across a vast expanse of New Mexico. Another 63-mile-long zone has been established along the border nearby in Texas. <\/p>\n
The Pentagon, which made the designations, has deployed some 9,000 active-duty troops to the border as part of Trump\u2019s directive to expand the military\u2019s role in reducing migrant crossings. Migrants who enter the new \u201cnational defense\u201d zones while crossing the border are being detained by U.S. troops, charged with trespassing and turned over to immigration authorities.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s part of a broader militarization of immigration enforcement in this stretch of border. <\/p>\n
U-2 spy planes have been flying missions in the skies. At the nearby Army base of Ft. Bliss, the U.S. is constructing a new 5,000-bed immigrant detention camp.<\/p>\n
The U.S. has also pushed Mexico to keep migrants from reaching Ju\u00e1rez and other border cities, and Mexican troops have ramped up enforcement in recent years. Migrant advocates blame those policies on a deadly fire at a detention center in Ju\u00e1rez in 2023 that killed 40 migrants and injured 27. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Migrants pass the time at Oasis de Migrante shelter in Ju\u00e1rez. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Bunk beds are jammed into a room at the Albergue Vida shelter in Ju\u00e1rez because the shelter once accommodated scores of migrants each month. <\/p>\n
Ort\u00edz, the activist, used to traverse the part of the border that has been turned into a national defense zone, leaving water for the migrants who crossed. But on a recent afternoon, while heading out to check on a water tank, he was stopped by Border Patrol agents who warned him he was trespassing on military land. <\/p>\n
The buildup of troops at the border and Trump\u2019s changes to the asylum system have made it nearly impossible for migrants to cross, Ort\u00edz said. In June, there were fewer Border Patrol encounters with migrants than in any month on record, according to the White House. On the day with fewest encounters, border agents apprehended just 137 people across the entire 2,000-mile long border. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Richard Osorio is now staying at the Oasis de Migrante shelter in Ju\u00e1rez. Osorio, who is from Venezuela, decided to leave the U.S. after his husband landed in immigrant detention. <\/p>\n
But Ort\u00edz is convinced that migration levels can\u2019t stay this low forever. There are too many jobs that need filling north of the border, he said, and too much poverty and strife south of it. <\/p>\n
This region has been a site of migration since pre-colonial times, he said. El Paso, which means \u201cthe pass,\u201d got its name from Spanish explorers who arrived in the late 16th century and established a trade route here leading from Mexico City to Santa Fe. <\/p>\n
Movement, he said, is part of our nature. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou will never be able to fully stop human migration,\u201d Ort\u00edz said. \u201cYou never have and you never will.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those most desperate to cross will find a way, he says. And that will probably mean paying smugglers even larger sums and taking riskier routes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL PASO, TEXAS \u00a0\u2014\u00a0Juan Ort\u00edz trudged through 100-degree heat along the U.S.-Mexico border, weighed down by a backpack…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[109786,109783,109788,109785,109789,109787,1429,109784,2132,32635,50171,50235,109790,1757,1017,49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-295991","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-auto-part","9":"tag-border-crossing","10":"tag-ciudad-juarez","11":"tag-el-paso","12":"tag-factory-layoff","13":"tag-juan-ortiz","14":"tag-life","15":"tag-maikold-zapata","16":"tag-mexico","17":"tag-migrant","18":"tag-office","19":"tag-shelter","20":"tag-tariff-policy","21":"tag-trump","22":"tag-u-s","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114925497216770399","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}