Trump’s immigration, tariff policies transform the U.S.-Mexico border

El Paso, Texas – Juan Ortíz was weighed with a backpack filled with water bottles, which he plans to leave for immigrants trying to cross this rugged land through 100 degrees of heat along the US-Mexican border.

Not only many immigrants.

Ortíz met dozens of people, sometimes trying to reach the United States in a single afternoon, when this started in the dangerous desert, which was close to El Paso about two years ago. Now he rarely sees any one. The border crossings began to fall in the last months of President Biden, and under President Trump has fell to the lowest levels over the years.

Ort We dramatic differently, ”he said, except the sparkle of the desert silent, footprints in the sand and a border patrol of the helicopter hill. “Immigrants no longer have hope.”

These border areas surrounding El Paso were a long risk of risk, and the opportunity was the opportunity. The immigrants who chase the American dream have gone through tens of thousands of people a year, sometimes escape from federal agents and often seek them to ask for asylum.

But Trump’s immigration pressure – prohibition of asylum, a mass deportation campaign and the unprecedented militarization of the border – changed life in countless ways.

He murmured with life in front of Rio Grande from El Paso in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, once murmured with life, with the smell of cooked casserole and the chatter with the chatter of people planning their transition to the United States.

Today, these shelters are largely empty, trapped in Mexico when Trump began to work, and others in the United States, but frightened by policies designed to instill fear.

The 22 -year -old Maikold was one of the lucky ones.

Last year, he entered the US through the CBP One, a government application that helped to make a asylum appointment in more than 900,000 immigrants in entrance ports. Zapata worked as a landscape architect at El Paso, sent most of his earnings back to his family in Venezuela, but sometimes visited a water park with his friends at steak dinner or with friends.

What kept Zapata alive at night was a court history that approached the immigration case.

Since Trump took office, Zapata had heard the federal agents that had emerged even at routine immigration hearings and took the immigrants with handcuffs. He was afraid of being arrested and sending to an so-called crocodile alcatraz in Florida, or to a very far-distant country-perhaps to El Salvador or South Sudan, in which the authorities had sent the US borders in recent months.

Pastor Francisco Gonzalez Palacios says that the number of immigrants coming there in the Albergue Vida shelter, where he runs in Juárez, has fallen in recent months.

Zap Imagine that he came to Africa without documents and money, Z Zapata said. “NO.”

In the early July, missing the court history was not an option, because electronic bracelets on his wrist allowed to monitor the location of immigration agents.

So Zapata filled a few items into a backpack and walked to the south on the US-Mexico border bridge, and left the claim of asylum and the dream he was working on on two continents. He plans to return to South America, where his mother will be Colombia. “I will go back, I will work all the way back.”

He keeps an immigrant child in Oasis Del Migrante, a small refuge for immigrants in Juárez.

For now, he lives in Oasis de Migrante, a small shelter in Juárez city center, and became friends with another Venezuela who made a similar choice.

35 -year -old Richard Osorio decided to leave the United States after his husband landed in immigrant detention. Osorio, who works in care to the elderly, said that the seizure of immigration agents was just a matter of time: ım I was full of fear. ”

He hopes that his wife’s lawyer can convince the United States to drag the man to Mexico and that Osorio can make a life there.

The majority of immigrants standing along the border could not find this to the US.

Eddy Lalvay approached. He and his 5 -year -old nephew Gael was 17 years old when he came to Juárez last year. Originally from Ecuador, they were trying to reach New Jersey, where Gael’s mother lived.

However, before passing, he was detained by the Mexican officials who sent them to a government shelter for the minors.

Eddy Lalvay at the Albergue Vida shelter in Juárez came to the border with his young nephew a year ago.

Lalvay was released when he was 18 years old. However, Gael has recently been in custody that he was 6 years old, and the authorities say they would leave him only to a parent or grandfather.

Orum I’m trying to be strong, but I feel terrible, Lal Lalvay said, in the last afternoon, while the working class, which is celebrated with industrial parks, sits in another shelter in another shelter.

Francisco González Palacios, a Christian priest who runs the facility and manages a belief -based shelters network, said the number of immigrants hosted by the network has fallen from 1,400 to 250 in recent months. “Nobody comes from the south,” he said.

Authorized, some shelters that provide legal or humanitarian assistance to immigrants, and non -profit groups may need to be closed, because many of whom were indirectly financed by the US International Development Agency, which was indirectly closed by Trump.

He describes the immigrants gathered in the shelter to rethink their goals, as the “plan A olan, a life in the United States, cannot be achieved.

“Look for plan B,” he says. “Stay for a while, start working. God will help you.”

However, other Trump policies hurt the economy in the region and limit the opportunities of immigrants.

The immigrants walk in the garden in the Albergue Vida Shelter in Juárez.

Juárez for a long time Mexicans, North American Free Trade Agreement exploded, targeted for the United States and other goods in the factories of the factories of the poor regions attracted from the poor regions.

However, the threats of Trump’s tariffs on goods from Mexico over the goods on the goods over and over again, the industry in the Juárez region stunned the industry, and the factories left thousands of workers.

Iz We are in the midst of the enormous uncertainty, ”he said,” We are in the midst of uncertainty, “he said,” A few years ago, approximately 308,000 workers are employed in factories below 340,000.

52 -year -old Mexican Juan Bustos, recently lost the assembly line by making automobile pieces. Most days, the factories that say they are hired to get new jobs are listed at 6 in the morning.

“Not as easy as it was,” he said.

He said that most of the life in Juárez depends on the decisions taken in Washington. “He’s changing his mind until minutes, Bust Bustos said Trump. “We are in his mercy.”

From Mexico to the international border, the prickly wire marks the boundary that divides Mexico and the United States.

On the US side, the industry also hangs from the tariff uncertainty.

Jerry Pacheco, who runs an industrial park in NM, a few miles west of El Paso, said several companies that have been planning new projects since Trump’s office started to work.

The park is based on a new militarized zone extending to a wide width of New Mexico. A region of 63 miles long was established along the border in Texas.

The Pentagon, who made the appointments, placed Trump’s role in reducing the army in reducing immigrant transitions, as part of the directive of expanding the directive of approximately 9,000 active officials. As the border crosses the border, immigrants entering the new “national defense” regions are detained by US troops, accused of unauthorized entry and delivered to immigration officials.

It is part of a wider militarization of immigration sanctions on this border.

U-2 spy planes fly mission in the sky. Ft. Bliss is building a new US 5,000 -bed immigrant detention camp.

The US also pushed Mexico to prevent immigrants from reaching Juárez and other border cities, and Mexican troops have increased their implementation in recent years. Immigrant defenders accuse these policies for a fatal fire in an detention center that killed 40 immigrants in an detention center in Juárez in 2023 and 27 injured.

The immigrants spend time at the Oasis de Migrante shelter in Juárez.

The bunk beds stuck in a room in the Albergue Vida Shelter in Juárez, because the shelter once welcomed migrant points every month.

The activist Ortíz left water for immigrants who crossed the part of the border which was converted into a national defense zone. However, in the last afternoon, as he went out to control a water tank, he warned him that he had entered the military land without permission.

Ortíz said that the accumulation of troops at the border and Trump’s changes in the asylum system made it almost impossible to pass the immigrants. According to the White House, in June there was less than a monthly border patrol with immigrants. With the least encounter, border agents caught only 137 people in the entire 2,000 -mile border.

Richard Osorio is now in the Oasis de Migrante shelter in Juárez. Osorio from Venezuela decided to leave the United States after his husband was detained.

But we were convinced that migration levels could not be so low forever. There is a lot of work to be filled in the north of the border and too much poverty and strife in the south.

He said that this region has been a place of migration since pre -colonial times. El Paso, which means “Pass ,, took its name from the Spanish explorers from the late 16th century, where he established a trade route from Mexico City to Santa Fe.

He said that movement was a part of our nature.

Ort I will never fully stop human migration, ”he said. “You never have it and you will never be.”

He says the most desperate ones will find a way. And this will probably mean paying even greater amounts of smugglers and getting more risky routes.