Trump’s Immigration Shutdown Could Create a Dystopian Humanitarian Crisis
Genesis Bonilla keeps several hundred dollars hidden in her ponytail, tucked behind a layer of hair between the rubber band and her scalp. Along her journey through Mexico, Bonilla has been robbed on multiple occasions, including by Mexican immigration agents who patted her down looking for hidden cash. “But they never check the hair,” she says.
For two months, Bonilla, her husband, and their three children, the youngest age 5, have lived in a migrant shelter in Mexico City, where Bonilla works in the kitchens, overseeing the life cycles of endless pots of beans and rice. Originally from Venezuela, the family crossed six countries, including the perilous Darién Gap, a strip of untamed jungle between Colombia and Panama, with the goal of reaching Bonilla’s younger brother, who completed the same journey two years ago and now lives in Utah.
Bonilla has considered turning back on multiple occasions — once at the top of a boulder in the Darién Gap, when she realized she was terrified of heights, and once after an armed robbery, but the worst was when she and her family arrived after dark in a town in Southern Mexico and wandered the whole night through the streets with nowhere to stay. “We got to a town at almost 10 at night and we were really scared because we didn’t have phone signal and we couldn’t see the map and my feet were really hurting. Thank God we found a shopping cart, so the two kids could sit inside, but my teenager, my husband, and I were walking, pushing the cart. My feet were messed up, but I had to keep my spirits up, and it was sunrise and we were still walking.” But Bonilla’s husband and children convinced her to keep pushing forward at every turn.
She isn’t hoping for a glamorous lifestyle in the United States, only for basic security. In Venezuela, her family struggled to feed themselves due to the economic crisis — for over a month one year when food costs reached untenable levels, Bonilla ate only mangoes, which she harvested from a tree in her neighborhood. In the U.S., Bonilla says, she hopes to ensure her children never grow hungry, always have shoes, and never fear for their lives.
Now, she is slowly realizing the whole journey may have been for nothing. “If I told you I knew what we were going to decide to do at this moment, I would be lying,” she says.
When Donald Trump is sworn into office in January, migrants like Bonilla and her family could be robbed of their chance to build a life in the United States. Without money to return home, they’ll be forced to stay in Mexico, a country they never intended to live in, where they have neither friends nor family, and where they will be vulnerable to extortion and kidnapping by criminal groups that target migrants. “It would hurt me a lot to have to stay here… There’s nothing to do but wait and keep the faith… We’re taking life day by day.”
Trump’s election victory has set off an ominous ticking timer, as most migrants, as well as those working to support them, suspect the incoming Trump administration will act quickly to seal the only remaining pathway to seek asylum, the appointment system on the CBPOne app. Because of an executive order from President Joe Biden last June, anyone who wishes to ask the U.S. for asylum must use the app to request an appointment with Customs and Border Protection officers at specific locations along the border. At the appointment, they are asked to attest that they are in real danger in their home country and in every country they passed through along the way. The app offers 1,400 appointments per day, and there are hundreds of thousands of migrants currently waiting in Mexico for their moment. Though some apply in groups or family units, there are nowhere near enough appointments available for everyone applying before January 20. Trump has already promised (via a post on X) to shut the system down.
Migrants like Bonilla have been waiting up to a year for their chance to meet with CBP and ask for protection from the United States, but now they may never have that opportunity. There is nothing one can do, other than fill out a profile on the app with the correct information, to increase the likelihood of receiving an appointment. As with anything determined by pure luck, many have responded by praying, manifesting, and practicing radical hope, denying the possibility of being stuck forever in Mexico in the hopes of conjuring up an appointment out of pure mental resilience. Oscar Ríos Mendoza, a devout Christian from Nicaragua, believes God is in charge of the CBPOne appointment system, and worries he is being tested — he has taken to volunteering at a church in Juárez, where he lives in a migrant shelter, helping to fix broken sections of the wall in an attempt to get back in God’s good graces. “Only God knows if I’ll get an appointment, the date and time. And only He knows if I’ll see my family again.”
If the CBPOne appointment system is shut down, there is little that can be done to prepare for the hundreds of thousands of people who will need to settle in Mexico, waterlogging migrant shelters and encampments, and inflaming growing xenophobia among the Mexican population. David Villaluz, who works at a migrant shelter in Juárez, says his organization plans to just roll with the punches: “It’s delicate for all of us because it affects us in many different ways… Unfortunately, we have to go along with whatever happens… What is someone supposed to do if they already sold everything they own to migrate, they’re on their way, and then the election happens?”
Should Trump restrict the only pathway to asylum, organizations, states, or individuals can file lawsuits, as the right to seek asylum is protected under both U.S. and international law, but these cases could take years to wind through the courts — and meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people would begin to pool in Mexico, growing more desperate by the minute. Jobs are already scarce for migrants in Mexico, and in areas where larger groups congregate, some shops, like laundromats, are already listing different, higher prices for Venezuelans, Cubans, or Haitians, compared to the figure for Mexican nationals. With shelters full, few work opportunities, and expenses piling up, many will be left without options, and with no way to leave.
On November 27, Trump had a phone call with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to discuss collaboration to manage migration — afterwards, both disagreed on what was said. While Trump claimed that Sheinbaum had agreed to take in asylum-seekers no longer able to enter the United States through any legal means, Sheinbaum refuted this, saying she “never, and we would be incapable, said we were going to close the border.”
Should these asylum-seekers, stuck in Mexico, lose their patience and choose to approach the border wall on foot and ask U.S. agents for asylum directly, under current Biden administration policy, they would be taken into CBP custody and deported back into Mexico, or to their home countries if they are from Central America — only those who have appointments on the CBPOne app are permitted entry. However, Sheinbaum has said, in response to Trump’s rhetoric about mass deportation, that her government will no longer accept deportees from countries other than Mexico.
This means migrants from countries like Venezuela and Cuba who cross the border between ports-of-entry could be held in detention centers indefinitely. During the first Trump administration, migrant detention centers faced credible accusations of physical abuse, neglect, and even forced medical procedures.
Over the past few months, members of the Texas National Guard have grown increasingly violent with migrants who attempt to cross the border and seek asylum this way. In October, Victor Celaya, a migrant escaping a death threat in Honduras, waded across the Rio Grande in Juárez with a group of others that included small children. When they reached the U.S. side of the river and attempted to make contact with Border Patrol agents, the Texas National Guard fired bullets at their feet. “They nearly shot a woman who had kids with her… We knew they weren’t blanks because we could see the holes they made in the ground,” he says. Though the violence deterred the group from seeking asylum on that day, all remain determined to reach the United States, through any means necessary, as it is the only place they can imagine they’ll find true safety.
Criminals and grifters are those who serve to benefit most from Trump’s second term, says Villaluz, the Juárez migrant shelter worker, despite Trump’s assertion that these are the very people he means to target with his policies. With the threat of a total shutdown of the asylum system come January, many migrants waiting for CBPOne appointments in Mexico are considering more clandestine, more reckless methods of reaching the United States. Already, prices have risen for coyotes, organized crime operatives who ferry migrants over the border. Fees amount to over $10,000 per person, depending on proximity to the border when the guide is hired, the method used to cross the border, and the location where a group will enter the United States from Mexico.
Like every mechanism used to immigrate, legal or illegal, people with greater means are favored. How could a family of five, like Bonilla’s, come up with that kind of money? Migrants are often forced to borrow cash, usually from family members, to pay the fee. Sometimes, it’s all a scam, and the coyote never arrives. Moving larger numbers of people, coyotes can become callous in their greed, and will occasionally leave behind migrants in the desert if they move slowly or have health conditions, or will abandon groups of migrants if they suspect Border Patrol is nearby.
Scammers target migrants with impressive creativity. The frantic mood among those currently in transit has also made it easier for grifters to manipulate their victims, posing as figures with authority and experience. Posts in Facebook and WhatsApp groups promise to boost your chances of getting a CBPOne appointment for a fee, or offer lower airfare from Mexico City to border cities with fake airline logos, or encourage migrants to take specific routes, where they can be trapped and extorted like fish baited into a net. Under Trump, if access to the asylum system is shut off entirely, migrants may be even more likely to believe scams promising miracle solutions to their predicaments.
Paulino Reza, a lawyer for the Cafemin migrant shelter in Mexico City, expects as Trump administration policies make it more difficult for vulnerable people to reach the U.S., kidnappings and disappearances of migrants will continue to rise, as criminal groups take advantage of people stuck in Mexico, extorting them if possible, and killing them if they can’t come up with the cash. Thousands will die, and will be forgotten, their stories never told, their families left without closure, too afraid to seek answers. “If I had to guess, I think 85 percent are kidnapped before they get to Mexico City, or something happens to them. And then between here and the border, it’s assured they’ll suffer some kind of circumstance,” Reza says.
Though he submits missing persons reports and documentation to local and federal authorities, Reza says disappearances of migrants are rarely investigated in Mexico. He is preparing himself emotionally for what’s ahead, by practicing solitary meditation, but says the moment is already here, as migrants, as well as the criminal groups profiting off of them, bend to the new reality: Several weeks ago, 50 migrants boarded a bus outside the shelter and most were never heard from again. “We’ve been looking for information, but it all just happened so fast,” he says.
Reza always informs the shelter residents of the risks associated with hiring smugglers, which include losing all of their money, possible deportation if one is caught by Border Patrol, and a slow painful death of dehydration lost in the desert. But convinced by smugglers that they must enter the U.S. before Trump is inaugurated, many migrants are choosing to put their lives in the hands of people they know they cannot trust. “Criminality in every way that has to do with migration is really high at this moment, really high,” he says.
Perhaps most worrisome of all, Reza says, is the shift in public opinion on migrants, both in the U.S. and Mexico. Support for immigration is waning at a rapid clip, and with it, regard for the lives of the millions of people migrating. Reza expects the shelter will have difficulties in the coming years ensuring their budget. He is not the only one — on the other side of the border, migrant aid organizations are facing tight pockets and fists at the door. This year, Texas Governor Greg Abbott attempted to shut down several prominent shelters in the state through a series of lawsuits claiming the organizations were involved in human trafficking by helping migrants fill out asylum applications.
The most publicized case was a lawsuit against a Catholic, El Paso shelter, Annunciation House. In February, 2024, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton threatened the shelter with search warrants to seize all of their documents, and said the organization was in violation of laws that protect religious groups. The lawsuit was struck down by a judge in July, but current employees at Annunciation House expect Trump may try similar tactics to weaken institutions that protect migrant populations. This may create blackout zones, where little support is available for migrants, while in neighboring blue states, shelters will remain open. A nun who works at Annunciation House but chose to remain anonymous says, “No one knows what’s going to happen, no one knows anything at all.”
Law enforcement aligned with Trump’s anti-migrant agenda may also intimidate and threaten American citizens, good samaritans, who dedicate themselves to helping migrants, working at migrant shelters, leaving water bottles in the desert for migrants crossing the border who may be dehydrated, and volunteering to teach immigrants English or donate used goods to those in need. In recent months, Abbey Carpenter, part of a group that drops water bottles and searches for the remains of migrants who died crossing the desert in New Mexico and Texas, says local police have sent her threatening emails asking for her personal information.
If Trump succeeds in enacting his plans, aid organizations in Mexico are likely to be overwhelmed, not just with asylum-seekers, but with deportees, many of them Mexican citizens who have not lived in Mexico for decades and may no longer have support networks there. Trump has promised to deport a million undocumented people, though a former employee at ICE who spoke with Rolling Stone on the condition of anonymity, says it is extremely unlikely the Trump administration could reach this number due to budget constraints. It is more plausible smaller raids will be carried out, affecting tens of thousands of people, and first targeting those whose locations are known to the government. These would be undocumented people who have had any interaction with police, DMV, or other officials who could link specific people to home addresses, but could also be asylum-seekers who have been released into the United States, but have not formally submitted their asylum applications yet, a group that accounts for many thousands of people.
Edme Eliteme, an asylum-seeker from Haiti, who is 65 years old, just arrived in Florida, after a journey through eight countries that exacerbated his existing health conditions — at this point, he is skeletal, having lost a considerable amount of weight, and he suffers from constant back pain. Eliteme is worried he will be deported back to Port-Au-Prince, where powerful street gangs and food shortages have made life unliveable. “I miss my wife,” he says. “But I don’t have the money to bring her here yet. There’s a gang of 400 men that controls our neighborhood.”
Because President Sheinbaum has declared she will only take in Mexican deportees, immigrants from countries like Venezuela, Cuba, or Nicaragua, without deportation treaties with the United States, could be held in detention centers, glorified work camps, for months, with possible family separations within or between facilities. Trump is appointing Tom Homan, one of the orchestrators of his previous family separation policy, as Border Czar, which could mean the resuscitation of the policy that prompted overwhelming public outcry during the first Trump administration. Over a thousand families are still separated, five years later. Homan has also said he has no concern for mixed-status families, and if an undocumented immigrant is detained who has a spouse or children who are U.S. citizens, they should follow their loved one to Latin America.
The private prison industry is ramping up to profit off of the detention of these refugee families and undocumented immigrants. After the election, George Zoley, founder of Geo Group, the largest private prison operator in the country, said, “The Geo Group was built for this unique moment in history and the opportunities it will bring.” Experts suggest possible billion dollar government contracts to be awarded to private prison contractors to incorporate tens of thousands of migrants into the carceral system.
All of Trump’s policies will likely result in lawsuits from organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed over 400 lawsuits against the government during Trump’s first administration. But Republicans will now have a governing trifecta — in large part due to the popularity of anti-immigrant rhetoric among voters — controlling the White House and both houses of Congress, in addition to the Supreme Court. And while acts of judicial resistance could be successful to block Trump’s policies in theory, as they snake through the court system, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, will be affected in the meantime — stranded in Mexico, kidnapped, deported, separated from family members, imprisoned in work camps, living in hiding, and dying in the desert.
These effects will remain long after Trump is out of office, in the collective memory of everyone currently in transit. Even for those too young to be fully aware of the geopolitical realities of their lives, these traumatic experiences are transformative. Bonilla’s five-year-old son is showing signs of PTSD — at the migrant shelter in Mexico City, he draws pictures in crayon of the Darién Gap jungle, and is now meeting with the shelter’s psychiatrist. Reza, the Cafemin migrant shelter lawyer, is anticipating his own mental collapse from bearing the weight of so many other people’s suffering, but he is determined to continue supporting migrants.
“The number of people who need shelter is going to rise, and we’re one of very few spaces in Mexico City,” he says. “We’re equipped to take in 100 people, but there have been moments when we have 800, a thousand coming through in a month… Now imagine with everyone deported… There’s no plan in place whatsoever.”
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