Border Crossings Grind to Halt as Trump’s Tough Policies Take Hold

In this border city, large groups of migrants marching toward the U.S. have all but halted. Migrant encampments are disappearing, and few people are trying to sneak across remote desert areas to start new lives in the U.S.

“The door is closed,” said Yorman Briceño, a Venezuelan migrant staying at a church-run shelter in Ciudad Juárez, just across from the border from El Paso, Texas.

He had been waiting about six months for his Jan. 23 appointment to request asylum in the U.S. under a Biden-era program, until it was scrapped by President Trump on Jan. 20. Now, after watching how others have been rounded up in immigration sweeps and extradited by the U.S. to a notorious prison in El Salvador, he said he wasn’t even sure he wanted to go anymore.

“There’s no more hope for entering legally as long as Donald Trump is there, and anyone telling you otherwise is lying,” said Briceño.

{snip}

As the issue featured prominently in the campaign, migrant encounters tallied by U.S. authorities fell precipitously in the months leading to the election. Since taking office, Trump has delivered on his pledge as encounters have since fallen further to their lowest levels since the 1960s.

For the moment, tighter controls by the U.S. and Mexico, along with Trump’s moves to shut down legal immigration pathways has brought migrant crossings to all but a standstill. The administration’s targeted and dramatic expulsion of migrants to the prison in El Salvador has also created a powerful deterrent.

Though Trump is struggling to deliver on another campaign promise—mass deportations—the border is an early political victory. According to a Wall Street Journal poll in March, 53% of voters approve of Trump’s handling of border security, while 43% disapprove.

At an annual Border Security Expo this month in Phoenix, administration officials celebrated the low border crossing numbers to a crowd of hundreds.

Border czar Tom Homan said “gotaways”—an agency guess of how many people might have crossed the border without getting caught, based on clues such as footprints and camera sightings—had dropped to 41 the day before.

“Forty-one is pretty good,” he said. “But we’ll get to zero. And when we get to zero, we’ll have operational control of the U.S. border for the first time in this nation’s history.”

{snip}