In a Mexico Border Town Famed for Crossings, 'There Are No Migrants'
By: James Wagner (The New York Times)
Do not come. That was Kamala Harris' message to 'migrants'. Joe Biden repeated that message at odd occasions. Biden was cracking down on asylum seekers. So was Mexico.
But it's all Trump's fault.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Tijuana had migrants sleeping in its parks, shelters packed with families, and claimed to be the busiest border crossing by land in the Western Hemisphere.
Now, the migrants trying to pass through Tijuana's gateway to Southern California have all but disappeared from sight.
The street where people lined up, waiting for asylum appointments to try to enter the United States legally, lies deserted. At the border wall, which some migrants climbed in desperate attempts at illegal crossings, the only ruckus nearby is road construction. On Thursday morning, five people waited on the Mexico side of the border crossing where crowds had once gathered.
"People aren't coming here," said Lenis Mojica, 49, a Venezuelan migrant who has been living in a shelter here since January. "Everyone has left. No one else has arrived."
Mexican cities along the border have reported similar drop-offs in migrant numbers in recent months, a fall that began before President Trump was inaugurated but that has grown more dramatic since he took office, promising a crackdown on immigration. In April, U.S. border agents apprehended 8,383 people along the U.S.-Mexico border, down from 129,000 apprehensions in April 2024, and far below the record of nearly 250,000 apprehensions in December 2023.
Officials in the Trump administration have hailed the decline as a victory, including the secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem, who in April wrote on social media, “The world is hearing our message: do not come to this country illegally.”
But despite the fall in crossings, Mr. Trump and other aides have also maintained that there is an emergency at the border, and the president said this week that he deployed the National Guard to quell protests in California and “liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion.”
Residents and the few migrants who remain in Tijuana, a border city of over two million people, say that they don’t see evidence of anyone rushing the border — or of much activity at all.
“The reality is this: There are no migrants,” said José María García, 58, the founder of a shelter just a few blocks from the United States. “It’s very calm,” he added.
Unlawful border crossings began to drop under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., as he imposed asylum restrictions and Mexico hardened its own crackdown on migrants. The decline grew much sharper after Mr. Trump shut down an app that allowed migrants to schedule asylum appointments to gain entry into the United States.
Ms. Mojica, the Venezuelan migrant, said her own appointment was canceled the same day Mr. Trump took office.
She had arrived in Tijuana only days before, after a long trip through the dangerous land route called the Darién Gap with her husband and mother. She had been living and working in Peru, she said, but sold everything with the dream of reaching the United States and reuniting with her children, who entered the country legally.
She has not given up hope as her shelter emptied out, with migrants returning to hometowns or trying to settle in Tijuana. But with economic and political instability in Venezuela, and her husband finding work as a security guard in Tijuana, Ms. Mojica has started to consider a longer-term stay.
“The only option I see is to stay here, rent a place, and see what happens,” she said.
Johanna Ayada, who helps run the Ambassadors of Jesus shelter, where Ms. Mojica is staying, described a stark decline in migration. For parts of 2022 to 2024, she said, her 2,500-person shelter was at capacity, with people sleeping on the floor of the church.
By January, she said, the number dropped to roughly 1,300 migrants. Now, she said, it was down to about 700, mostly Mexicans displaced by violence elsewhere in the country.
Mr. García, the shelter founder, called Youth Movement 2000, said only 50 migrants were at his 200-person center.
Mr. García said he was puzzled by Mr. Trump’s recent remarks.
“He’s been in power for five months and the border areas are semi empty,” he said. “There is no longer the same community for him to say that there’s an invasion in his country. Maybe he’s saying it because of what happened years ago or maybe it’s because of what he’s seeing in Los Angeles, a sanctuary city.”
In the same shelter, Blanca Isabel Romero García, 37, and her family of 10, including five children and three grandchildren, had packed up their belongings to move out.
They fled Mexico’s Morelos State last fall, she said. Cartel gunmen opened fired on her cafe, killing her son-in-law, she said, because she couldn’t afford to pay a monthly extortion fee.
Ms. Romero García said she had applied for asylum, hoping to join her mother and siblings in the United States, but didn’t get an appointment before Mr. Trump’s inauguration. After seven months in a shelter, her family found some work and a trailer home to rent.
“For the moment, yes, we’re staying,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “Maybe in a few years, if things change in the United States, I’d rather go there.”
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Do not come. Didn't people understand what Kamala Harris was saying?
Not really. She spent 4 years as the "Border Czar" and didn't do anything to slow the flow of illegals. Now the new "Border Czar" is enforcing the laws and Harris doesn't like it.
She only made the "don't come" statement as lip service.
Harris' objection to the presence of National Guardsmen and Marines is also just lip service. If the protests have been largely peaceful, as Harris claims, then there's nothing to worry about. Law enforcement doesn't start riots.
There are none coming. In May there were zero.
However, we do have sanctuary cities in the US, such as Los Angeles which are full of illegal migrants. Those migrants are counted by the census and provide states like California with additional representation as well as federal money. That is the big problem.
And everybody needs to take notice of WHO is fighting ICE apprehensions.
The apprehensions in California would cause them to lose a seat or two and some votes.
The seeded article confirms that.
Even people in Mexico (as mentioned in the story) are aware of the sanctuary city problems. The NYT journalism seems to be attempting to imply that the illegal immigrants in the United States are no longer a problem now that the border has been controlled. Since migrants are no longer flooding the border, we can just look away and ignore past problems. Kick the can and everything will be fine.
Thank you Nerm.
Got it.
Biden kept telling everybody it would take an act of congress to secure the border. Apparently it doesn't. All it takes is enforcing existing laws and the flow slowed itself quite nicely.
And don't give me that "Republicans killed the bill" bullshit. Democrats filled that bill with pet projects and more money wasted in Ukraine. IT NEEDED TO BE KILLED.
Fewer illegals means crime rates go down, drugs crossing the border dropped significantly, and jobs are opening up.