Trump closes the border, leaving migrants in Mexico with few options

As panic set in, two men strung ladders with a rope and placed them over the steel border wall separating Tijuana from Southern California.

“Hurry up, hurry up, keep moving!” shouted the smugglers at the bottom of the stairs. A young Zimbabwean woman stood at the top and watched with wide eyes, hesitating before taking her next step.

On Monday, people waiting to enter the United States learned that President Trump had canceled all asylum appointments moments after taking office and planned to sign several executive orders that sealed the border.

Still, at least one group still made a desperate and dangerous last-ditch effort to cross the United States.

One by one, they climbed the wobbly structure, then slid down the other side. Those who did helped capture the women and children. But a woman fell to the ground on his way and lay down moaning in pain, clutching his leg.

“We do this out of necessity, not because we want to, and that’s it,” said Carlos Porras, 39, from Peru, speaking through the slats of the wall. He also hurt his ankle while jumping and limping.

Moments later, the group was approached by US Border Patrol officers and taken away.

The scene revealed the despair of the migrants who learned on Monday that the border was now effectively closed. Everyone was left to process emotions, from bewilderment to despair.

“I feel anger, I feel sadness, I feel everything,” said Katherine Romero, 36, a Venezuelan who had been waiting a year in Mexico City for her asylum appointment on Monday, working various jobs to save up for the plane ticket to Tijuana. “I can’t believe it.”

In a series of orders he signed Monday evening, Mr. Trump moved to close the nation’s borders to migrants, part of a barrage of policies that included broadly blocking asylum seekers and a declaration of national emergency to deploy the army to the border.

His administration shut down the CBP One app just minutes after Mr. Trump took the presidential oath on Monday. The app was used by the Biden administration to allow migrants to schedule appointments to enter the United States, but had been a target of Republicans.

The program allowed 1,450 people a day to schedule a time to present themselves at a port of entry and apply for asylum. More than 900,000 have entered the country with the app since its launch by the end of 2024.

At a migrant camp in Mexico City on Monday, Cristian Morillo Romero, a Venezuelan who arrived in Mexico more than a year ago, learned that Mr. Trump had ended the CBP One program — but he didn’t know what that meant. for his January. 26 appointment in Calexico, Calif.

Then he opened his email. There was a message in English with the subject “CBP One Appointment Cancelled” explaining that the existing appointments “are no longer valid”.

“I want to cry,” said Mr. Morillo Romero, 37. When it finally hit him later in the day, he did.

In Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso, only a group of 100 people were allowed to cross into the United States for their early morning appointments. Then, just before 11 a.m., Mexican border officials said they received a notification from their American counterparts: No more appointments accepted.

“I’m in shock,” said John Flores Bonalte, 36, a Venezuelan who never made it to his 1 p.m. appointment. “It’s unfair. We were waiting to cross legally for a long time. It’s been seven months waiting in Mexico for this appointment.”

José Antonio Zuchite, 40, said he left Honduras in September and waited five months in Mexico City before coming to Ciudad Juárez this weekend “with a lot of hope.” His appointment on Monday was cancelled.

“I don’t have a place to stay,” he said, his voice cracking. “I have no family or acquaintances here. I’m on my way.”

On social media, migrants shared images and videos of themselves, crying or with their heads in their hands, with captions that detailed it. how long they were waiting for appointments. Many said they had been biding his time in Mexico. Some said they had waited more than a year.

Many of the videos featured the same clip from a song which had also served in recent years as a kind of anthem for people who finally he did to the United States.

Now many were scrambling. In Tijuana, some people considered standing while praying for some sort of miracle. Others said they planned to go to places like Mexico City, where there were more job opportunities. Some said returning to their native countries was out of the question because they were fleeing violence or threats.

“Going back to Haiti means going back to death,” said Rose Joseph, 28, who left the country. torn violence capital more than two years ago.

In her press conference on Monday, President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico strongly urged Mr. Trump’s team to replace the CBP One app with another mechanism so that people could apply for asylum in an orderly manner .

“We want something similar to be established, because it has had results,” he said.

The program was a key part of the Biden administration’s effort to get control of migration across the southern border. US officials at the time believed that by offering migrants an organized way to enter legally through an app, they could discourage unauthorized crossings.

Coupled with Mexico hardened restrictionsIllegal crossings dropped significantly in 2024 and officials and analysts say the app was a significant reason.

“It was a massive change,” said Ariel Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington. “It provided more stability and the opportunity to have better control on both sides of the US-Mexico border, because it made the path of migrants more predictable.”

Critics, however, saw the program as a way to allow those who would otherwise have no legal path to the United States to come and stay for years while their immigration cases languished in the courts.

“They made a request to facilitate illegal immigration,” Vice President JD Vance he said in a post on X last week. “It blew my mind.”

Without a replacement program, migrants stuck in Mexico are likely to face three scenarios: try to cross illegally into the United States, return to their home countries or apply for asylum in Mexico.

“Maybe it’s not what many migrants want, but it’s an alternative,” said Ruiz Soto. However, he added, that would not be much help for Mexicans trying to flee their own country. “For them, I don’t see many options.”

Francisco González, a pastor who oversees a network of migrant shelters, including one in Ciudad Juárez, said he expects migrants to stay longer in shelters as they plan their next steps. He worries, he says, that people may now take more risks by recruiting smugglers or members of organized crime to cross the border illegally.

“They’ll keep trying,” he said.

Aline Corpus contributed report from Tijuana and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega and Annie Correal from the city of Mexico.