\n<\/p>\n
On the eve of President Trump\u2019s deadline to impose tariffs on Mexico, one thing is hard to miss on the Mexican side of the border: The migrants are gone.<\/p>\n
In what were once some of the busiest sections along the border \u2014 Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, Tijuana, Matamoros \u2014 shelters that used to overflow now hold just a few families. The parks, hotels and vacant buildings that once teemed with people from all over the world stand empty.<\/p>\n
And on the border itself, where migrants once slept in camps within feet of the 30-foot wall, only dust-caked clothes and shoes, rolled-up toothpaste tubes and water bottles remain.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll that is over,\u201d said the Rev. William Morton, a missionary at a Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez cathedral that serves migrants free meals. \u201cNobody can cross.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Last week, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, announced<\/a> that Customs and Border Protection had apprehended only 200 people at the southern border the Saturday before \u2014 the lowest single-day number in over 15 years.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump has credited his crackdown on illegal immigration for the plunging numbers, even as he has also announced he will send thousands more combat forces<\/a> to the border to stop what he calls an invasion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But according to analysts, Mexico\u2019s own moves to restrict migration in the last year \u2014 not just at the border but throughout the country \u2014 have yielded undeniable results. In February, the Trump administration said it would pause for a month the imposition of 25-percent tariffs on Mexican exports, challenging the government to further reduce migration and the flow of fentanyl across the border.<\/p>\n That progress has put Mexico in a far stronger negotiating position than when Mr. Trump first threatened tariffs, during his first term.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cMexico has new leverage compared to 2019,\u201d Ariel G. Ruiz Soto and Andrew Selee, analysts with the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, wrote in a report<\/a>. Mexico\u2019s cooperation, they said, has made it \u201cindispensable\u201d to the United States.<\/p>\n The number of people heading toward the United States dropped sharply after President Biden imposed sweeping restrictions on asylum last year. The Mexican government has also significantly stepped up its own measures in recent years to reduce the number of migrants reaching the border. The government has established checkpoints along migrant routes, imposed visa restrictions, dispersed caravans and bused people who arrived from places like Venezuela to remote corners of southern Mexico to prevent them from reaching the U.S. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Since last spring, the Mexican authorities have been apprehending more people<\/a> than their American counterparts every month. Now, the numbers at the border have fallen to almost nothing.<\/p>\n \u201cWe no longer have major flows of people coming \u2014 they have declined by 90 percent,\u201d Enrique Serrano Escobar, who leads the Chihuahua State office responsible for migrants, in Ju\u00e1rez, said last week.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n And those migrants who do make it to the border are no longer trying to enter the United States, shelter operators say.<\/p>\n \u201cThey know they can\u2019t cross,\u201d said Father Morton, in Ju\u00e1rez. \u201cAll the holes underground, the tunnels, the holes in the wall, they\u2019ve virtually sealed it \u2014 it\u2019s much, much more difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n In Mexican border cities, the scene at migrant shelters is much the same: tables sitting empty at meal time, bunk beds, unused.<\/p>\n Even before Mr. Trump took office, the number of people apprehended trying to cross the border had been dramatically dropping<\/a>, according to U.S. government data.<\/p>\n Many of those waiting in border cities had appointments through CBP One<\/a>, an application that allowed people to make asylum appointments with the authorities rather than to cross the border, shelter operators say.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n After Mr. Trump canceled the app on his first day in office, people gave up after a few days and headed south to Mexico City or even for the southern border, said the Rev. Juan Fierro, a pastor at the Good Samaritan shelter in Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez.<\/p>\n At a once-crammed shelter in Matamoros whose name translates to Helping Them Triumph, only a handful of Venezuelan women and their children remain, according to its directors.<\/p>\n In Tijuana, at a shelter complex within view of the border wall, the Foundation Youth Movement 2000, which once held hundreds of people of all nationalities, there are now just 55, according to its director, Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Lara.<\/p>\n They are the same people who have been there since Mr. Trump\u2019s inauguration.<\/p>\n \u201cThere have been the same number\u201d Mr. Lara said. They include people from Venezuela, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Colombia and Guatemala, as well as Mexican migrants from states considered dangerous to return to, such as Michoac\u00e1n.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n There are no figures available for how many migrants like these may be living in the border\u2019s shelters, hotels and rented rooms, and biding their time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe are going to wait to see if God touches Mr. Trump\u2019s heart,\u201d said a 26-year-old woman from Venezuela, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Maria Elena, as she sat eating with her 7-year-old son at the cathedral in Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez.<\/p>\n In response to Mr. Trump\u2019s demands last month, Mexico\u2019s president, Claudia Sheinbaum<\/a>, dispatched 10,000 national guardsmen to the border and sent hundreds more troops to Sinaloa state, a major fentanyl trafficking hub.<\/p>\n Officials and those who work with migrants are split on whether the troops, several hundred of which began to appear in and around every border city over the last month, have had an effect on illegal border crossings.<\/p>\n At the end of the border wall between Tijuana and San Diego, Calif., the National Guard has set up large tents on the Mexican side, in an area called Nido de las \u00c1guilas. About 15 miles from downtown Tijuana, it has long been used by coyotes, the smugglers who take advantage of the steep hills and lack of police presence to lead migrants into California, the authorities say.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The guard has also placed checkpoints at spots up and down the border.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In Tijuana, Jos\u00e9 Moreno Mena, a spokesman for the Coalition for the Defense of Migrants, said that the presence of the guard has been a major deterrent to migration, along with Mr. Trump\u2019s promised mass deportations in the United States.<\/p>\n \u201cThis doesn\u2019t mean that they won\u2019t keep coming,\u201d Mr. Moreno said. \u201cIt\u2019s just a pause, perhaps, until they see better conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n But in the state of Tamaulipas, where more than 700 guardsman arrived last month in places like Matamoros, the guardsman do not appear to be curbing migration, residents say. They seem to be concentrated on the bridge into the United States, while migrants are now seeking to enter through the desert or other rural areas.<\/p>\n In Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, where hundreds of guardsman were also dispatched in early February, the troops and military personnel have been stopping cars to inspect them, and searching for border tunnels.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThey have inspection spots at night, in the street,\u201d Father Morton said. \u201cThere are more here, ostensibly to stop the fentanyl, but I doubt they know where it is.\u201d He said they mainly stopped young men who were driving souped-up cars or had tattoos, creating an environment of \u201clow intensity conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The real work of curbing migration has been happening far from Mexico\u2019s northern border.<\/p>\n At the southernmost point in Mexico, in Tapachula, few migrants are entering. Shelters that recently housed 1,000 people now serve just a hundred or so, according to operators. Waiting for visas that allow them to head north, and dispersed if they try to form caravans, these migrants are all but blocked.<\/p>\nEmpty Shelters<\/h2>\n
Guardsmen on the Border<\/h2>\n