As Trump prepares for mass deportations, Mexico is not ready

MEXICO CITY - This week, Donald Trump appointed Tom Homan as “border czar” and Stephen Miller as deputy chief of staff, signaling a strong commitment to a hardline anti-immigration agenda. Few countries stand to be more affected than Mexico by what Trump has described as “the largest deportation in the history of our country.”

Nearly half of the estimated 11 million people living illegally in the United States are Mexican, according to analysts. Deporting them is cheaper and easier than sending migrants back to more distant countries that are at odds with Washington, such as Venezuela.

In Mexico, migrant advocates are alarmed at what’s coming. Sending millions of jobless Mexicans back to towns they left years ago could create chaos in areas already suffering from poverty and organized crime, they say.

“Neither the shelters nor the border area nor Mexico are ready for this,” said Héctor Silva, a Protestant pastor who runs the Senda de Vida migrant shelter in Reynosa, across from McAllen, Texas.

Mexico could struggle to absorb deportees

There are an estimated 5 million undocumented Mexicans in the United States. Transporting large numbers back home poses huge logistic challenges - in both countries.

Currently, U.S. authorities fly about 500 Mexican deportees a week back to Mexico City, where they’re met by government teams that help them find jobs and sign up for benefits, according to Arturo Rocha, a former senior Mexican immigration official.

Many more are deported across the U.S.- Mexico land border, where there’s insufficient infrastructure for large numbers of deportees, analysts say. There’s a network of migrant shelters, most run by religious groups. But they’re often underfunded.

“No one is prepared for deportations of this magnitude,” said the Rev. Francisco Gallardo, a Catholic priest who runs the Casa del Migrante shelter in Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas. “Neither the governments nor the civil-society organizations.”

Complicating matters, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who took office in October, is still putting together her team. There are vacancies in some key jobs that deal with migration.

Mexico’s economy will take a hit from deportations

Mexico will probably have to receive a large number of people at a time when its economy is slowing. The economy could shrink even further if Trump follows through on his threat to imposes tariffs on Mexican products. About 80 percent of Mexican goods - everything from avocados to automobiles - are exported to the United States.

Mexico’s unemployment rate is low, so the rise in joblessness could be temporary. But some of the migrants will end up trading working-class American incomes for much lower wages in Mexico. “They will be thrown into a new kind of poverty, which will make them more desperate,” said Adam Isacson, a migration analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, an advocacy organization.

The economy could face yet another threat from the deportations - a drop in remittances. Mexicans in the United States sent home more than $60 billion last year. Large-scale deportations “could seriously affect the poorest people,” said Tyler Mattiace, an Americas researcher at Human Rights Watch.

The deportations could also hurt the U.S. economy, which depends on undocumented workers to fill jobs in industries such as construction, hospitality and agriculture.

Organized crime could also benefit

Tom Homan, Trump’s newly named “border czar,” has said the operation will initially focus on undocumented migrants who’ve committed crimes or received deportation orders from judges but failed to leave the United States.

“We’ve got to go for the worst first,” he told The Washington Post in an interview Monday.

Few Americans would oppose deporting convicted criminals; that was a priority under the Biden administration, too.

But U.S. immigration crackdowns have had the inadvertent effect of strengthening organized-crime groups south of the border. Cartels earn billions of dollars by “taxing” smugglers whom migrants hire to get through Latin America and over the heavily guarded U.S. border. Many crime groups also kidnap migrants for ransom.

After Trump introduced the “Remain in Mexico” policy in 2019, forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their immigration hearings, thousands of them were abducted by crime groups in dangerous border cities.

The Rev. Marvin Ajic, a Catholic priest who operated a migrant shelter in Nuevo Laredo for four years, said organized-crime groups could take advantage if the new deportation effort dumps large numbers of Mexicans into already violent cities.

“The cartels have practically declared control of the northern zone” of Mexico, he said. “The migrants are going to be more vulnerable.”

Mexico’s challenges may extend beyond Mexican migrants

Mexico might be able to absorb its own deported citizens. What’s not clear is whether the Trump administration will press its government to also receive migrants from other countries.

Trump has called for reviving both “Remain in Mexico” and Title 42, which denied entry to migrants on the grounds they could pose a health hazard. The policies led to large numbers of non-Mexican migrants crowding border cities.

“I don’t think Trump’s plan is just to deport Mexicans” to its southern neighbor, said Eunice Rendón, the co-director of Agenda Migrante, an advocacy group based in Mexico City. “That’s where the complexities will begin. The border will become very congested.”

What is Mexico’s plan?

Mexican officials argue they have a strong hand in dealing with Trump on immigration. Under pressure from the Biden administration, Mexico launched its own crackdown on migrants this past year. That played a key role in driving down U.S. border detentions by 78 percent since December. Now they’re even lower than they were when Trump finished his first term.

Asked about Homan’s appointment, Sheinbaum told reporters Monday that “we are always going to defend Mexicans on the other side of the border.” Her government has said it will strengthen staffing at the more than 50 Mexican consulates in the United States to help ensure migrants’ rights are respected.

But Trump has threatened to impose tariffs of at least 25 percent if Mexico doesn’t drastically slow the flow of migrants and drugs over the border. Given Mexico’s dependence on U.S. trade, Sheinbaum may wind up giving in on some of Trump’s demands - as her predecessor, president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, did during Trump’s first term.

“We are prepared to receive large numbers; we have done this before,” said Rocha, the former immigration official. “But the key question is, how massive will massive deportations be?”

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Valentina Muñoz Castillo contributed to this report.