12 Mar 2025
The number of migrants crossing into the US has dropped to a record low – largely due to a crackdown by Mexican authorities, who are going to great lengths to stave off Donald Trump’s threats to impose tariffs.
“The number of people crossing into the US has gone down dramatically. Before there were a lot of people. Now you can only see two, three trying to cross.”
It’s hard to hear the Mexican National Guardsmen over the helicopter blades, as we fly over the stretch of land between the city of Juarez, and El Paso in Texas.
But it’s easy to see the migrants beneath us, running through the steep terrain, trying to escape our view.
Some make a futile attempt to disappear under blankets in the scrubland.
Others hide under rocks.
Migrants spotted from a Mexican National Guard helicopter
Migrants spotted from a Mexican National Guard helicopter
But they’ve been spotted, and any dreams they had of making it across the US border, are over.
The number of migrants crossing into the US has dropped to a record low.
It’s largely due to a crackdown by Mexican authorities, who are going to great lengths to stave off US President Donald Trump’s threats to impose tariffs, by meeting his demands to stop the flow of migrants.
They’ve invited us aboard the helicopter to prove it, pointing out how heavy their presence is now, with more troops and patrols.
Back on the ground, in Juarez, the border crackdown is causing big problems for the local cartels.
Four organised crime gangs run the city. They make most of their money smuggling drugs, and people.
After days of talking with sources, we got access to smugglers inside the Juarez Cartel.
One of them, Cholo, runs 30 safe houses where migrants wait for his team of ‘coyotes’ to take them across the border. At the moment, he’s charging them double the usual rate.
I asked him if he’s worried about the ‘Trump’ factor making it harder to cross.
“Yeah for us it’s gonna be more difficult to get people to El Paso you know but it doesn’t matter we have to. F*** Trump and F*** the world, we have to make money, you know.”
New tent city built in anticipation of increased deportations
New tent city built in anticipation of increased deportations
But it’s more difficult now than ever, and some cartels are kidnapping migrants to extort them for ransom instead of attempting the crossing.
Cholo denies his smugglers do that, reasoning that it would cost them more in the long run.
“Let me tell you something – if you take care of your job, you do the right things, you are gonna have more jobs you know? If you start kidnapping, or disappearing people – beating them up, how can you get money? If you are doing that in our own cartel we kill you, you can’t do that. No, if I know you are doing that, you’re dead.”
In a nearby shelter, we meet a family of migrants, Lina and Cesar, and their two little boys.
It took them 11 months to make the trip here from South America, through the deadly Darien Gap and on the notorious ‘Beast’ train through Mexico. They had secured an appointment with US immigration officials at the border, before President Trump’s inauguration in January.
But they never made it.
“While moving through Mexico, we were kidnapped twice. All the family.”
– Lina and Cesar
They were held captive, and pressured to pay a ransom they couldn’t afford.
Lina and Cesar live in a shelter with their two boys
Lina and Cesar live in a shelter with their two boys
Lina’s biggest fear was that the criminals would find another, unthinkable, way to make money from them.
“Organ trafficking. (I feared) that we were never getting out of there, and that they saw my kids as business.”
They were eventually released, but they’re still in shock. Afraid to leave the shelter, but also afraid to stay.
Their dream of escaping poverty for a better future for their boys, is dead.
All they want now – is to stay alive and stay together, and eventually, get home.
Watch more:
Undocumented migrants fear Trump’s ‘largest deportation programme’
Germany narrowly rejects anti-migrant bill
Tamil migrants’ hellish time held on Diego Garcia