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 * POLITICS


TRUMP VICTORY SPURS WORRY AMONG MIGRANTS ABROAD, BUT IT'S NOT EXPECTED TO HALT
MIGRATION

ByMARÍA VERZA, FERNANDA PESCE and CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN
Friday, November 8, 2024 12:50PM
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ABC7 Eyewitness News


Donald Trump's victory in the United States presidential election instantly
changed calculations for millions of migrants or potential migrants across the
globe.

But perhaps not in the way Trump imagined.

Trump has pledged to reduce immigration. But by narrowing the already limited
legal pathways into the U.S., migrants will just recalibrate their plans and
resort in greater numbers to hiring smugglers, experts say.

In many cases that will mean turning to organized crime groups that increasingly
profit from migrant smuggling.

Migrants walk along the highway in Huixtla, southern Mexico, heading toward the
country's northern border and ultimately the United States, Thursday, Nov. 7,
2024.
AP Photo/Moises Castillo

Those potentially affected come from dozens of countries and many have already
sold their homes and their possessions to fund the trip.



Venezuelans continue arriving at the U.S. southern border in reduced, but still
large numbers. Mexicans made up half of U.S. Border Patrol arrests in September.
Chinese come through Ecuador and make their way up through the Americas.
Senegalese buy multi-stop flights to Nicaragua, then move north.

The U.N.'s International Organization for Migration estimates there are around
281 million international migrants in the world, or 3.6% of the global
population. An increasing number of people will be displaced for political,
economic and violence reasons, and more migrants will seek asylum, according to
its annual report. It warns that when people cannot find regular pathways, they
start looking for "irregular channels that are extremely hazardous."

SEE ALSO: Donald Trump wants a mass deportation program. How much could it cost?

During Trump's first administration, Mexican border cities were saturated with
migrants. Cartels preyed on them, kidnapping them, extorting their families for
ransoms and forcibly recruiting them into their ranks. There were hundreds of
arrivals every day, as well as thousands who were made to wait out the
potentially yearslong U.S. asylum application process in Mexico.

A U.S. program called CBP One brought some order after it was introduced by the
Biden administration in early 2023. Migrants no longer have to come to the
border to schedule an appointment and can do it on their smartphones. Once
overflowing border shelters have emptied and many families are making every
effort to go the legal route.



Trump has pledged to end CBP One. He also wants to again restrict refugee
resettlement and warned throughout his campaign of mass deportations.

While his victory was deflating and worrisome to those en route to the United
States, it was not a deal-breaker.

SEE ALSO: Judge strikes down Biden administration program shielding immigrant
spouses from deportation

On Tuesday night, Bárbara Rodríguez, a 33-year-old Venezuelan, should have been
sleeping after walking more than eight miles through southern Mexico's tropical
heat with some 2,500 others from at least a dozen countries.

Instead, she was watching U.S. election results on her cellphone.



Back in Caracas, Rodríguez helped monitor a polling place for the opposition
during Venezuela's July election. After President Nicolas Maduro claimed
reelection, his supporters began to harass her family.

"Either my family's lives were going to be at risk or I had to leave the
country," she said. In September, she sold her house and left her three children
with her mother.

Now her plan of waiting for a CBP One appointment to request asylum at the U.S.
border has an expiration date.

"Plans changed. We have until Jan. 20," she said, referring to inauguration day.
She has not ruled out hiring a smuggler, she added.

Martha Bárcena, Mexico's former U.S. ambassador during most of Trump's first
administration, said migrants were the losers from his immigration policies and
that could happen again.



"Organized crime is the big beneficiary, because the income from illegal human
trafficking is already equal to or greater than the income from drugs," she
said.

Estefanía Ramos of Guatemala woke up worried Wednesday in a Ciudad Juarez
shelter across from El Paso, Texas.

"We're trying to figure out what's going to happen to us," the 19-year-old said.
"This wasn't the plan."

She and her husband left Guatemala after a gang threatened to harm him and
kidnap her, she said. They have been waiting for three months for a CBP One
appointment. Two months ago they had a baby girl.

"If we can keep waiting for an appointment we will," Ramos said, adding that she
doesn't want to risk an illegal crossing with the baby.

On Wednesday in Ciudad Juarez, a few dozen asylum seekers with appointments
waited patiently to be called across the international bridge.

Gretchen Kuhner, director of IMUMI, a nongovernmental legal services
organization in Mexico, was in the southern Mexican city of Tuxtla Gutierrez
last week, where she found migrant families with young children living in the
streets waiting for CBP One appointments.

"They are getting their cellphones charged every day at some makeshift place on
the street so they can check their CBP One appointments ... while they're
breastfeeding and sleeping in a tent without any water," she said.

"People who need protection are really trying to do it the right way."

Further restrictions on the already difficult process would leave vulnerable
populations with few options, said Mark Hetfield, CEO of the U.S.-based refugee
support organization HIAS.

"It would mean they have no place to go because there are many, many countries
in the hemisphere where there is effectively no asylum system or where even if
you could get asylum, you're not necessarily safe," he said.

And then there's the specter of massive deportations. Trump made a similar
threat before and didn't deliver, but there's real concern.

Deportations to countries like Cuba and Venezuela could be complicated by icy
relations, though Venezuela's Maduro issued a conciliatory message
congratulating Trump Wednesday. Advocates in Haiti on Thursday demanded
countries, including the U.S., halt deportations because of the country's
domestic crisis.

And no country stands to be more impacted than Mexico. There are some 11 million
Mexicans living in the U.S., about 5 million of whom don't have legal status.
Mexicans sent home more than $63 billion in remittances last year, mostly from
the United States. Mass deportations would shake the finances of millions of
families and the Mexican economy would struggle to absorb them.

Migrant advocates and shelter directors in Mexico said they've heard of no
government plans to deal with large numbers of deportees.

Mexican aid groups are "not in a position to receive that quantity of people and
let's be honest, it's civil society that carries on its shoulders most of the
humanitarian response toward those who are deported or in transit," said Rafael
Velásquez García, Mexico director for the International Rescue Committee.

Mexico needs to prepare itself for all manner of pressures coming from a Trump
administration, said Carlos Pérez Ricart, a professor of international relations
at Mexican public research center CIDE.

"What Mexico has to accept is that our country is going to be a holding country
for migrants, whether they want it or not," he said. "Trump is going to deport
thousands, if not millions of people and he's going to impede the flow of
migrants."

Report a correction or typo
Copyright © 2024 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.


RELATED TOPICS

 * POLITICS
 * DONALD TRUMP
 * U.S. & WORLD
 * IMMIGRATION


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