From The Center for Immigration Studies

By Todd Bensman

TAPACHULA, Mexico — This town near the border of Guatemala holds a migrant time bomb ready to go off just after the US presidential election.

The fuse was lit in December 2023, when the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration sent senior lieutenants to Mexico to work out the details of what remains a highly mysterious grand diplomatic bargain.

Worried about what the optics of the southern border would do to their re-election chances — though not the migrant crisis itself — the White House wanted to stop the pictures of crowds of people gathered at the wall.

The deal was to have Mexico deploy 32,500 troops to the US border to round up untold thousands of intending border crossers from the northern precincts and force-ship them — “internal deportation” by planes and buses — thousands of miles to Mexico’s southern provinces and entrap them in cities like Tapachula in Chiapas state behind militarized roadblocks.

Mexico closed off most of its freight trains to migrant free riders, bulldozed northern camps, and patrolled relentlessly for more deportee targets.

Meanwhile, the administration increased “parole” programs that flew migrants directly from countries like Venezuela, thus avoiding the border entirely.

The effect was immediate. Illegal border crossings plummeted from an embarrassing, record-breaking 12,000 to 14,000 per day in November and December 2023 to about 3,000 or 4,000 per day before January was even over.

But the crisis isn’t over.

The just-released 2025 Homeland Threat Assessment from the Department of Homeland Security says the decrease in illegal border crossing is largely due to “increased Mexican enforcement efforts.”

What happens if that enforcement stops?

Tapachula is bursting at the seams.

No one really knows how many people are stacked up, but local shelter managers reported to me that they had filled up long ago.

The publisher of Noticia De Tapachula, the daily newspaper, told me 150,000 immigrants were in town at any given time, a 42% increase in the city’s normal population of 350,000. Untold thousands more are stacked up in Villahermosa, a city of 830,000.

Mexico’s response has been to try to spread the immigrants around the southern portion of the country.

I spent time at two different roadside areas where federal immigration officers would call out names from the crowd, who would board buses that delivered them to other regional cities in Chiapas — but NOT beyond them and certainly never beyond Mexico City.

Mexico is still trying to hold up its end of the bargain, at least until November 5, even though more migrants are starting to slip through and making it over the Texas or California borders.

The question is what happens after the American election.

No matter who wins, Mexico might well consider that it more than satisfied its obligation to the current White House occupant and open the floodgates.

If it’s Donald Trump, Americans should expect a massive tidal wave of caravans for the 10 weeks before Inauguration Day. All the migrants I’ve spoken to say they fear a Trump presidency, and will rush to the border in a last-ditch attempt.

If it’s Harris, perhaps the massive tidal wave will go on for the next four years, much like the last four.

Todd Bensman, a senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, is the author of “Overrun: How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S. History.”

From ToddBensman.com

By Todd Bensman as published by The Daily Mail

“I love Kamala Harris,’ a young Venezuelan man declared as he rested on the side of a highway in southern Mexico last week.

His belongings were heaped at his feet. Hundreds of fellow migrants stretched out along the roadway in both directions.

They’re headed for the U.S. and nearly all of them have an opinion about who should be America’s next president.

Donald Trump, no,’ the Venezuelan man said, shaking his head and dragging his thumb across his throat in a slicing motion.

He is one of thousands of migrants – from all over the world – joining a new rush traveling north from southern Mexico toward the U.S. border, less than two weeks before the presidential election.

I went to Tapachula in southwest Mexico near the border with Guatemala to investigate why they were on the move – again.

Throughout 2022 and 2023, massive caravans – some reportedly as large as 6,000-strong – became a common feature of the immigration crisis.

The mass migration became such a humanitarian and public relations disaster for the Biden-Harris Administration that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was dispatched to meet with Mexico’s president in December 2023 to demand that he impose stricter immigration controls.

And the pressure campaign worked.

‘I love Kamala Harris ,’ a young Venezuelan man declared as he rested on the side of a highway in southern Mexico last week.  He is one of thousands of migrants – from all over the world – joining a new rush traveling north from southern Mexico toward the U.S. border, less than two weeks before the presidential election. (Above) Migrant caravan near Tapachula, Mexico on October 20, 2024

In January, I reported for DailyMail.com on Mexican police and military roundups near the U.S. border.

Migrants who made it to those northern provinces were detained and shipped hundreds of miles back south to cities like Tapachula in the southwest or Villahermosa near the gulf.

The Mexican media called it ‘Operation Carousel.’

And for nearly 10 months, the caravans stopped.

But now, they’re back on.

The migrants I spoke to on the road this week believe that this may be their last chance.

Many of them hope to reach the U.S. before November 5 because they fear that, if Trump is re-elected, he’ll close the southern border and enforce longstanding immigration laws.

‘If [Trump] wins… one has to do what the government says, [wait] for my turn,’ said Carlos, a Honduran man in a caravan 30 miles north of Tapachula.

In reality, it’s unlikely that these migrants will be able to make the 1,300-mile trek in the next two weeks. But they can try.

And there’s another more complicated reason that the caravans have started back up: The Mexican government is encouraging them.

The caravans that I traveled with were escorted by Mexican National Guard escorts, something that I have witnessed.  Perhaps, it not only the migrants growing restless, so, too, are the authorities.

For months, an estimated 150,000 U.S.-bound migrants have been bottled up in increasingly dire conditions in Tapachula, as ever more arrive there from South and Central America.

In fact, the true number massing in southern Mexico may even be in the hundreds of thousands.

I’ve visited Tapachula at least five times over the last decade and I’ve never seen it so crowded. All the hotels and motels are packed. Immigrant shelters are at full capacity.

Those who cannot afford accommodations – including women and children – sleep on the streets and in city parks, packed in like sardines.

Remember this as you hear Vice President Kamala Harris tout new statistics showing a precipitous decline in the number of illegal U.S. border crossings in 2024.

She attributes the positive change to the recent enforcement of U.S. asylum laws. But that’s not the full story.

Even the Department of Homeland Security admitted earlier this month that the drop in illegal US border crossings is due, in part, to, ‘increased Mexican enforcement efforts.’

Indeed, at the White House’s behest, Mexico has been containing these people for months in southern cities like Tapachula and Villahermosa, which have come to resemble sprawling, open-air refugee camps.

Now the situation is becoming untenable.

According to those I’ve spoken to, the Mexican government’s promises to provide travel documents to the migrants have never materialized.

In an apparent recognition of the overcrowding, the U.S. government is now building a new migration processing facility in Tapachula.

Meanwhile, the Mexican government is starting to transfer migrants out of Tapachula into surrounding cities to relieve the growing pressure.

And, the coming election is only heightening tensions.

Incredible drone shows large caravan migrants heading to the US

A group of Ghanaian men in a congested park in Tapachula told me that they feared a Trump presidency.

‘We do not like Donald Trump, because he don’t like us,’ one man said.

To him, Kamala Harris is the preferred option.

Another Ghanian man said he plans to wait for the results of the election, before making his next move: ‘If after election day [Harris is elected], we know that everything is good, then we can enter.’

A group of Ghanaian men in a congested park in Tapachula told me that they feared a Trump presidency. ‘We do not like Donald Trump, because he don’t like us,’ one man said. To him, Kamala Harris is the preferred option.

A middle-aged Venezuelan man also in the park reiterated those fears: ‘We know that if Donald Trump wins, all the migrants will be kicked out the [United States]… we hope that he doesn’t win.’

It is still unclear how far north these migrant caravans will get before America votes – and I suspect that many migrants only wish to escape Tapachula.

But, certainly, it seems likely that after November 5 – Mexico’s newly-elected president will consider her country’s part in ‘Operation Carousel’ to be complete and lift any remaining immigration controls.

That would mean hundreds of thousands of migrants, who have been waiting out the U.S. election in Mexico, may be permitted to – once again – try their luck at crossing illegally into the U.S.

As far as they’re concerned, a Kamala Harris presidency would mean that America’s borders will be thrown open.

If Donald Trump is elected president, their plans may change.