From Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies as published by The Daily Mail

US law enforcement sources tell me the rumour is patently absurd

There were no signs of human life, just railroad tracks and a rough dirt road, six miles west of a small Mexican mountain town.

But this was definitely the place described to me.

On a recent trip to Mexico City’s sprawling migrant encampments, I heard again and again stories about groups of immigrants who were breaking away from these urban bases and disappearing into the vast highland wilderness outside the city.

Now, I’d gone to find them.

As my translator and I picked our way through the mountain landscape dotted with pines, prickly pear cacti and brambles 40 miles northeast of Mexico City, the high desert looked empty.

Then we spotted someone watching us from behind a cluster of rocks.

‘Not immigration!’ I shouted in Spanish. ‘Friendly journalists. Please show yourselves.’

With that, some two dozen bleary-eyed men, women and children emerged from their hidey holes.

On a recent trip to Mexico City’s sprawling migrant encampments, I heard again and again stories about groups of immigrants who were breaking away from these urban bases and disappearing into the vast highland wilderness outside the city.

They were in rough condition, having just weathered a night on bare ground, too frightened of roaming Mexican immigration officers to build fires and too cold to sleep.

They’d brought water jugs but no food, blankets or even the most rudimentary camping gear. All of them repeatedly begged me for something to eat. Unfortunately, I hadn’t brought anything.

‘We haven’t eaten since yesterday. We don’t have that much money,’ a Venezuelan man named Jesus told me.

Another young Venezuelan, who lost a leg in a motorcycle accident back home, navigated the rough terrain on crutches, an empty pant leg flapping wildly. They told me that other groups were camped in the area.

Why?

Most of the migrants I met in Mexico City said they were giving up on their plans to sneak into America. As I reported last week, these people were either returning to their home countries or settling in Mexico.

Clearly, threats from the incoming Trump administration to close the border and deport all illegals are having the desired deterrent effect.

Other migrants said they’d make up their minds before the President-elect’s January 20 inauguration, to see if the Biden administration would approve their applications for ‘humanitarian parole’.

Using the Biden-created ‘CBP One’ mobile app to lodge such claims, some 771,000 migrants have entered into the US since January 2023. Trump has said he’ll end the program on Day One.

But there is a contingent of migrants who are refusing to be turned away. These are the ones escaping from urban encampments into the woods, in a race against time to illegally cross the border before Trump’s swearing-in.

They’d brought water jugs but no food, blankets or even the most rudimentary camping gear. All of them repeatedly begged me for something to eat. Unfortunately, I hadn’t brought anything.

It’s hard not to conclude that these migrants were drawn here, in large part, by President Biden’s disastrous immigration policies, resulting in more than 10 million migrants entering the US during his term. The message that has been sent to the world the past four years is that, if you make it to the border, you’ll likely find a way to cross.

And indeed, as I soon learned, this group had been convinced by a particularly delusional rumor sweeping Mexico City’s migrant camps.

It’s their firm belief that on Wednesday, December 18, the US and Mexican governments are going to withdraw all troops and border guards, giving tens of thousands of migrants one last chance to cross the border before the coming Trump crackdown.

December 18 is ‘International Migrants Day’, declared by the United Nations in 2000, as a time to recognize the plight of migrants worldwide.

‘On International Migrant’s Day, they’re going to open the border gates,’ a young Ecuadorian man named Jason confidently explained to me.

Six men sitting around him nodded in agreement.

My US law enforcement sources tell me this is patently absurd, suggesting that Mexican cartels had concocted the rumor as a way to wring migrants for cash one last time before the era of Biden’s mass migration ends.

Nonetheless, I embedded myself for the day with this group of true believers – hailing from Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala and Honduras – as they waited at a junction in the middle of the desert, where trains are known to stop for five to 10 minutes as the tracks are switched.

My US law enforcement sources tell me this is patently absurd, suggesting that Mexican cartels had concocted the rumor as a way to wring migrants for cash one last time before the era of Biden’s mass migration ends. (Above) Mexican immigration on patrol

The migrants’ plan was to hitch a ride on top of a freight train for a dangerous three or four-day trip north. The ultimate destination: The border crossing at Eagle Pass, Texas.

Word was the next train was due at noon.

There were three mothers with six young children among the group of 25; only one of the kids was accompanied by a father.

The rest were single young men in their 20s, including several who admitted they’d illegally crossed the border before and made their way to Denver and Houston, only to be deported after serving time for crimes.

One of these men refused to allow me to record him on either audio or video. Another told me he had been arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol during his time in Denver.

Everyone was on edge – and for good reason.

Trump has threatened Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, with 25 percent trade tariffs if she does not do what she can to halt illegal migration.

In response, she has enhanced tough nationwide immigration enforcement operations. Mexican National Guard and immigration officers are patrolling rail lines with orders to capture every immigrant and ship them a thousand miles south to Mexican cities on the border with Guatemala.

The migrants fear that and more.

‘Mexican immigration takes your money away, whatever you have, they take it away,’ said Alexander, a 30-something Colombian. ‘We’re running away from them.’

Two young men anointed themselves lookouts to warn the others when strange vehicles approached. They asked me to hide my rental car in the brush.

As we waited for the noon train, a motorbike carrying a man and a woman pulled up on the dirt road running parallel to the train tracks.

‘Immigration knows you are all here,’ the man warned in Spanish. ‘They’ll take all of your cell phones and money and send you to Tapachula. Hide in the landfill.’

At this, the entire group bolted over the tracks to a mammoth fenced-off garbage dump and squeezed through holes in the chain link. The pile stunk terribly. In the refuse, the children found a feral dog nursing newborn puppies in a hole she’d dug.

Here we waited for several hours until a train horn sounded in the distance. Everyone rushed back through the fence, but were quickly disappointed. This train wasn’t going to work. The cars were cylindrical oil tanks – far too hazardous to ride on top of.

At this, the entire group bolted over the tracks to a mammoth fenced-off garbage dump and squeezed through holes in the chain link. The pile stunk terribly. In the refuse, the children found a feral dog nursing newborn puppies in a hole she’d dug.

Here we waited for several hours until a train horn sounded in the distance. Everyone rushed back through the fence, but were quickly disappointed. This train wasn’t going to work. The cars were cylindrical oil tanks – far too hazardous to ride on top of.

‘There’s no way they can get on,’ one of the lookouts said. ‘It’s going to be slippery. It’s very dangerous for the children on top.’

The wait continued.

More hours later, another train horn sounded. The migrants ran for it. The legless Venezuelan man on crutches somehow managing to keep up.

I followed close behind as the train stopped and the migrants scrambled up ladders onto the roof of one car. But, again, they were foiled.

A truck of armed Mexican National Guard troops and two immigration enforcement vans approached. Everyone rushed back down, dropping their backpacks off the train in a swirl of panic.

Seconds before the immigration vans arrived, they group disappeared into the brush.

I lingered to talk to the guards, but their vehicles never slowed. Though I could see that the two vans were full of migrants, perhaps caught elsewhere along the train line.

The train chugged away without anyone on it. And, shortly after, the migrants emerged from the brush once again.

This time, they refused to speak to me, hurrying off down the road… to a likely dead end.

From ToddBensman.com

I’m thinking right now of returning to Venezuela,’ said a man, who has been living in a makeshift tent of streets of Mexico City for eight months. ‘I’m just staying here until January 20 to see if I get [a CBP One appointment] and, if not, go back home.’

MEXICO CITY — President-elect Donald Trump won’t take office for another five weeks, but his election is already causing a sea change in America’s illegal immigration crisis.

In sprawling migrant camps across Mexico City, people are giving up their plans to cross into the United States and are instead planning to settle in Mexico or begin the long trek back home.

‘I’m just going to give up and go back to Venezuela,’ said a woman in one of the squalid encampments, where thousands of migrants have constructed tents with tarps and scrap material.

‘I have children to take care of,’ she added. ‘I’ll just go back because, with Donald Trump, it’s going to be too hard.’

This is a cruel reality for millions of people drawn to Mexico by the Biden administration’s indulgent border policies – only to find that Americans overwhelmingly rejected the misguided approach in the 2024 election.

The young mother of two had hoped to have already entered the US through President Joe Biden‘s ‘humanitarian parole’ program known as CBP One.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has reported that, since January 2023, the federal initiative has allowed entry into the US for 771,000 migrants, at a rate of about 1,600 people a day. But that program was also quickly overwhelmed by the volume of requests resulting in a massive backlog.

Now, the Trump transition team says the program will end on Day One of the new administration.

In sprawling migrant camps across Mexico City, people are giving up their plans to cross into the United States and are instead planning to settle in Mexico or begin the long trek back home.

‘I think they’re eliminating CBP One, so I’m thinking right now of returning to Venezuela,’ said a man, who has been living in a makeshift tent of streets of Mexico City for eight months. ‘I’m just staying here until January 20 to see if I get [a CBP One appointment] and, if not, go back home.’

To the Trump team, these prospective ‘self-deportation’ cases offer some proof that the President-elect’s border security plan may already be working as intended.

Now, they hope word of this deterrent effect will spread to the home cities, towns and villages of potential future migrants and dissuade them from making the dangerous trip.

Others interviewed said they plan to find work and live inside Mexico rather than return to their even more impoverished home countries.

‘I’m going to stay here,’ said a young Colombian man wearing a red, yellow and white shirt who’d travelled with his wife through the perilous jungle between Colombia and Panama.

He says he is loath to give up now after spending thousands of dollars to smugglers to get him this far. His wife agrees.

‘We went through the trouble and expense of traveling through the Darien Gap. I’ll look for asylum here in Mexico,’ she said. ‘As soon as I have a job with work to do, it’ll be fine.’

A migrant from Angola in central Africa said there’s no turning back for him either; the journey home would be too difficult and expensive.

‘I’m going to stay here,’ said a young Colombian man wearing a red, yellow and white shirt who’d travelled with his wife through the perilous jungle between Colombia and Panama. 

A migrant from Angola (above) in Central Africa said there’s no turning back for him either; the journey home would be too difficult and expensive.

‘It is not my main goal to stay here in Mexico,’ he said in broken Spanish. ‘But if it just happens, you know, I’m going to stay here.’

Trump has also threatened Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, that the U.S. will impose debilitating 25 percent trade tariffs on her country if she does not dispatch Mexican military and immigration services to end the flow of migrants north.

The Mexicans now routinely capture migrants and transport them south to the Mexican cities of Tapachula and Villahermosa along the Guatemalan border.

The US currently estimates about 1,600 illegal border crossings daily. That’s down from the peak of 14,000 in a single day just one year ago.

Indeed, Mexico began this program earlier in 2024 at the urging of the Biden administration, but the Trump tariff threat has reenergized the operation in some regions.

‘The Mexicans don’t want us to go farther. They want us to go back. That’s why I’m staying in Mexico City,’ a migrant named Josmer told me.

A third anticipated Trump policy also appears to be having a deterrent effect – the President-elect’s promise to begin the ‘greatest mass deportation in American history.’

Trump reiterated those plans in an interview with NBC News this weekend.

‘We’re starting with the criminals and we’ve got to do it,’ Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker. ‘And then we’re starting with the others and we’re going to see how it goes.’

‘The Mexicans don’t want us to go farther. They want us to go back. That’s why I’m staying in Mexico City,’ a migrant named Josmer told me.

That message is apparently being received loud and clear in Mexico City.

‘He says he’s going to kick all the illegal people out of the country,’ another young mother said, as she prepared a pot of pulled chicken for dinner. She conceded, there’s ‘no point’ in trying to enter the U.S. illegally.

Not all of the migrants that I spoke to said they’d leave immediately.

At least one young Venezuelan told me that he’ll never stop trying to sneak into the US after working for six months as a barber in one of the camps.

‘We’re going to keep trying, you know, just climb the walls,’ he said. ‘[Trump] says that we’re going to get deported, but we’re going to try it again.’

By Todd Bensman as published by The Daily Mail