The camp was so large that it was divided by streets and even neighborhoods. There was Las Vegas, Tijuana, Dubai, Havana… The migrants living there organized markets and parties. By dint of living together, they sometimes argued, but deep down they helped each other out, for they were all messengers of the same dream: to reach the United States. Seven or eight people slept in each tent as best they could. This camp in the border city of Reynosa (in Tamaulipas state, in northern Mexico), was named Río Camp due to its proximity to the Rio Grande, which is just a few feet away, and it once housed around a thousand migrants from Central America, South America and Africa. Today, no one remains. The timbers of what were once roofs, a communal kitchen, and a few huts are piled up on the abandoned land: signs of the existence of nomads who left their temporary home not long ago, like a recently extinguished campfire. Their footprints confirm their past, but give no clues as to their fate.

It seems clear that they failed to cross the border, sealed by Donald Trump the moment he became president of the United States on January 20. The Republican leader, who returned to power with an extreme hardline immigration policy, banned the entry of asylum seekers and triggered a hunt for undocumented immigrants. Thousands of migrants from Honduras, Venezuela, El Salvador and Cuba have now embarked on a reverse journey, returning to their countries of origin or to other cities within Mexico, which has ceased to be a transit point and has become a destination country, as evidenced by the increase in residency and work applications from citizens of other countries.

International organizations and non-profits are already reporting an unprecedented trend of north-south migration in the Americas. Migrant detentions in Mexico and at the U.S. border have plummeted to historic lows. Through the Darien Gap, counter-current crossings from Panama to Colombia are already being recorded, and migrants have begun to see Brazil and Chile as promising destinations, according to the United Nations. Trump’s policies, in short, have destroyed the migratory flow map as it was known until now. The paradigm shift is forcing humanitarian organizations to reorganize their efforts and raises the question of how organized crime will respond to the loss of the lucrative illicit business of migrant exploitation.

The shelters are now almost empty. Río Camp was an extension of the Senda de Vida camp, made up of three settlements in Reynosa. In Matamoros, an hour away, there is the Pumarejo shelter. Together, they sheltered 9,000 people at peak occupancy, during the Joseph Biden administration, according to estimates by Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which provides care to populations in transit in these shelters. Currently, according to the same organization, only about 250 people remain there.

Their stories echo in the emptiness. What they once needed, a little space, now devours them, in the tiresome routine of prolonged waiting. And what are they waiting for? A miracle, an unexpected turn of events, that one day Trump will allow entry into the United States to those who were stranded on the border when he shut down the CBP One app, which processed asylum applications. “Let’s see what surprise God has in store for us,” confides Yoni Civira, a 42-year-old Venezuelan who has lived in the Pumarejo camp since January. “Let’s see if President Trump touches his heart.”

Yoni has been in transit for five years after leaving Venezuela, with temporary stays here and there, accompanied by his children and wife. Along the way, his retina detached, and he lost sight in one eye, and he’s going blind in the other. He’s invested too much life to consider returning to his country, mired in a deep political and economic crisis. He clings to this place with the stubbornness of those who have risked everything. His fellow Venezuelan, Aimara Moreno, 40, struggles to recount everything she’s endured to get to this point, so close to a better future. “I’ve blocked out many things I don’t want to remember anymore. It was very hard,” she says, although it is clear how, despite everything, she’s sinking into the past.

Others have the memory of the atrocities burned into their memories. Hilda Meza, a 32-year-old Honduran woman, was kidnapped along with her husband and four children just after crossing the Suchiate River, which divides Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala. They were held for three days in a safe house in Chiapas, where there were about 100 other migrants. The armed hitmen, who could easily be from the Jalisco Cartel (CJNG) or the Sinaloa Cartel, “were drinking and doing drugs all the time,” she recalls. They were released after their families paid 1,000 pesos (US$54) for each family member from Honduras. Threats from the gangs prevent her from returning to her country. And even if she could, she says, she would be unable to retrace the same path.

Final destination: Mexico

The scenes of empty camps are replicated in Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, Pachuca, Mexico City and Tapachula. Migrants are practically not going north anymore. “Trump’s message was quite clear. Why would they take so much risk on this migration route if they’re going to reach a closed border?” reasons Emmanuelle Brique, deputy coordinator of MSF’s Northern Mexico Border Project. The figures confirm the new reality of migration. In Mexico, detentions of people in transit have fallen 80% between 2024 and 2025 (January-May period), dropping from 590,690 interceptions to 113,612, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior. The reduction has been more noticeable this year. While 63,457 migrants were detained in January, in May there were only 5,123 (a decrease of 92%).

On the U.S. side, reports from the Border Patrol (CBP) show the same downward trend: while 905,920 migrants were detained along the border with Mexico in the period from January to May 2024, 108,658 were intercepted in 2025, a drop of 88%; in May alone, apprehensions fell to 12,452. Meanwhile, data from the Panamanian government on crossings through the Darién jungle show an even more dramatic reduction—98%—in the same reference period: from 170,014 migrants recorded in 2024 to 2,917 this year. In May, there were just 13 crossings.

In fact, the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) has begun documenting the reverse exodus across the Darién Gap: 7,696 people (one-third women) have retraced their steps between February and May, twice as many as crossed the jungle northward in the first half of the year. This is saying something, since the Darién is feared for the traps its wilderness contains, both natural and man-made. Many of those unwilling to undertake the return journey have decided to stay in Mexico. According to a comparative analysis by the IOM based on surveys, while seven out of 10 migrants stated that the United States was their final destination in 2024, this year that figure has dropped to five out of 10; at the same time, the number of those who see Mexico as a final destination doubled in the same period, from 24% to 46%.

The UN has recorded an increase in immigration procedures filed by people in transit to formally stay and work in Mexico. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reports that the country receives 250 asylum and refugee applications every day, almost as many as in 2024. “There is much talk about the decrease in the flow of foreigners arriving in Mexico, which is true, but we also see that the number of asylum seekers has not decreased proportionally,” said the agency’s representative in Mexico, Giovanni Lepri, a few weeks ago.

The IOM reports that three out of four migrants have no intention of returning to their country of origin. Many of them are already planning a long stay in Mexico. For example, men are rarely seen in the shelters in Tamaulipas in the mornings, as they leave to look for work in the cities of Reynosa or Matamoros. Some have found temporary jobs in construction or markets. In Senda de Vida and Pumarejo, only women and children remain, already enrolled in nearby schools, thus mitigating the learning loss resulting from living on the move.

Down south in Tapachula (Chiapas), the largest point of irregular crossings into Mexico along the southern border, a banana company has just hired 60 migrants, thanks to the mediation of Herbert Bermúdez, head of the Jesús El Buen Pastor shelter. The only requirement is that the new workers have processed their temporary or permanent permit with Mexican immigration authorities. “These people who have already looked for permanent employment are definitely staying,” says Bermúdez.

The pay for their work is 300 pesos for an eight-hour day, above the minimum wage in Mexico. The company also registered the migrants with social security and provided them with food. Naturally, these workers pay taxes. This salary allows them to send remittances to their families in their countries of origin. They didn’t have to go to the United States to achieve this. “These are people who just want to work properly,” Bermúdez sums up.

Becoming invisible

The fact that populations are migrating less doesn’t mean that the structural causes forcing them to leave their countries have disappeared. Mavi Cruz, director of the Fray Matías Human Rights Center in Tapachula, warns that the idea that “there are no more migrants” hides the danger of “making invisible” those who have been stranded in different regions along their journey. “When migration control policies become more restrictive, people lose their ability to move, cannot continue their migration plans, and are faced with other types of decisions, such as staying longer in other places,” she explains.

Fernanda Acevedo, coordinator of the Hospitality and Solidarity shelter in the same city in Chiapas, warns that, faced with mobility restrictions, migrants are seeking “more invisible and more dangerous routes.” “Because people will continue to move. The need to save lives sometimes means being invisible—even more so—and this can lead to a further increase in human trafficking at the hands of organized crime,” she emphasizes. How the reduction in migratory flow will change the role of cartels is a mystery that worries international agencies. Mexican authorities have well documented the lucrative branch of the criminal economy based on the bodies of migrants, whom the cartels extort, kidnap, or use as mules.

“The greater the control, the greater the risk for migrants. They seek more hidden routes, often more dangerous, more expensive, and therefore the coyotes charge more,” says Jeremy MacGillivray, deputy head of the IOM in Mexico. While before the border closure, smugglers charged migrants $5,000 with the promise of getting them into the United States, now the rates range between $12,000 and $15,000 per person, according to MSF’s findings through interviews at the camps.

A UN official, who requested anonymity because he was unauthorized, raises the possibility that cartels will now begin to unload the illicit business they had with migrants onto local populations in Mexico. “One of the main impacts of the change in administration in the U.S. is that, as migrant trafficking decreased, the recruitment of Mexicans by organized crime, extortion, and drug trafficking increased. And we are seeing it,” the international official observes.

The same UN representative shares that humanitarian agencies have had to rethink their strategies to assist a fleeing population. “No one is clear about the new scenario, in which state the most foreigners are staying, or what routes they are taking from the U.S. border to Guatemala. It’s a nebulous situation. This makes the response we had no longer relevant, because there are no more people and we don’t have clear data; we don’t know where to go, where to deliver aid,” he notes.

For this reason, MSF’s teams of doctors and social workers have decided to become mobile and make occasional visits to sites where they find small groups of migrants. They have also had to take more drastic decisions, such as closing their care center in Danlí, Honduras, which they operated for four years, “due to the decrease in migratory flow,” as they reported a few days ago. The shelters are also beginning to feel the loss of donations they routinely received to operate, in a situation where, without people in need, they are losing resources. The Jesús El Buen Pastor camp, for example, has not been able to raise enough money to pay its June electricity bill.

Specialists and shelter managers are certain that this circumstance is temporary, that migration will once again find its way north, like water through rocks. “It’s very difficult to break the migrant’s mindset of crossing into the United States,” says Ángela Gómez, one of the managers of Senda de Vida. The shelter’s director, Héctor Silva, a Christian pastor, defines migratory movements as waves: for the moment, there is a retreat, not a renunciation. Migrants, he says, are like snails that hide and remain still, waiting for an opportunity. Then comes the returning tide of the sea.

Pastor Héctor, as he is known, officiates mass for the faithful in the chapel inside the shelter, comforting their battered spirits. “I have to give them hope; I can’t tell them to go back to their countries,” he explains. “I tell them to trust in God, that for God there are no borders.” The pastor asks them to close their eyes and search their hearts. Do they see it? Do they see that door? Go to it, cross it, he asks. And they do. They smile.

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María Mancilla is 65 years old and constantly working. She has been cleaning houses for over 30 years, and her debts keep her in the workforce despite her back pain and bronchitis. She earns about 7,500 pesos a month (around $375), much of which goes toward paying off debt. Mancilla barely finished elementary school, her daughter made it to high school, and her mother never set foot in a classroom. She represents a Mexico that perpetuates inequality: 50% of people born into the lowest-income groups never rise out of poverty.

“We have a structural problem with the intergenerational cycle of poverty,” says Roberto Vélez, executive director of the Espinosa Yglesias Center for Studies (Ceey).

The center, which has been conducting a social mobility survey in Mexico since 2006, released a report last week with uncomfortable findings: Mexicans born into poverty face enormous challenges in improving their circumstances. In other words, “poverty in Mexico has a strong hereditary component.” This is the poverty María Mancilla has inherited — one that is further reinforced in her case by being a woman. “I have to work very hard to live better than my mother did,” she says.

Mancilla’s mother had to raise six children — four of them girls — on her own. “She was both mother and father and worked from 7 a.m. until midnight, also cleaning,” she recalls. “As we kids got older and started our own lives, we didn’t have anyone to help us continue studying or support us financially.” The study reveals that 75% of people whose parents had only an elementary school education or less do not reach Mexico’s average level of schooling, which stands at 9.4 years.

Roberto Vélez explains that the economic situation in Mexican society resembles a five-rung ladder. The first rungs represent the lowest income levels. “The question we ask is: if you’re born on the first rung — the very bottom — what are the chances you’ll move up from there? And the probability of staying there is 50%. That means half do move up, but how far?” he says. “It turns out that the vast majority — 28 out of 100— only make it to the second rung.” In other words, he adds, 78% of Mexicans remain stuck on the lowest income rungs.

Women at a disadvantage

María Mancilla managed to move up one rung but got stuck. She worked for years as a laborer in a textile factory, but had to leave the job during her pregnancy, which she says was “very serious.” “I stopped working for two years. Then I started looking for a job in someone’s home where I could bring my daughter. I also took on debt to pay for her needs, to help my mother, and to support the household. And that’s how we’ve managed — taking out loans, paying them off, and taking out more. I never see the end of it,” she says. Her daughter finished high school and then decided to study cosmetology. “Right now, she works in a beauty salon,” she says.

Roberto Vélez uses a term to describe how difficult it is for Mexican women to escape poverty: the “sticky floor.” “You just can’t pull yourself away from the bottom,” he explains. It’s the opposite of what’s known as breaking the glass ceiling, where women overcome the invisible barriers that block them from moving forward in public life.

The study by his organization shows that upward mobility from the lowest economic levels is even more limited for women. It’s also harder for women to remain in the top income group. “If you’re born on the top floor, the fifth level, what are the chances you’ll lose that status? For men, 53% manage to keep it. For women, it’s only 47%. That is, in percentage terms, women are more likely to lose it,” explains Vélez.

The wealthy north vs. the poor south

Inequality in Mexico is also shaped by geography. Mancilla is originally from the sprawling urban mass of Mexico City and its surrounding areas. She considers herself fortunate to own a home in Ermita de Iztapalapa, a neighborhood that, while economically disadvantaged, still has access to services, public transportation, hospitals, and schools. This stands in stark contrast to the situation faced by millions in southern states such as Chiapas, Oaxaca, Guerrero, or Veracruz. Vélez notes that in northern Mexico, 37% of those born on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder remain there — while in the south, that figure climbs to 64%.

“Nationally, Mexico is among the 10 countries with the greatest inequality of opportunity, but when you break it down regionally, it turns out that, on the one hand, you’re in the south, in the group of five countries with the greatest inequality of opportunity, but then you go north, and it’s among the 10 countries with the least inequality. There are states like Mexico City, Nuevo León, and Baja California that are next to Portugal; then you find Chiapas, Guerrero, and Oaxaca at the bottom of the ranking, alongside the Caribbean, Central American, and even African countries,” the analyst explains. These are regions where the Mexican state has historically been absent.

It’s a painful reality that former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador sought to address with social programs and direct cash transfers to the poorest populations — policies continued by his successor, President Claudia Sheinbaum. As a result, the national poverty rate dropped by seven percentage points, from 48% in 2017 to 41% in 2023. Still, that progress has not been enough.

Vélez points out that personal effort alone is not enough to escape the trap of extreme poverty — what’s needed is a strong state presence and robust public policies. Among the measures he recommends are fighting discrimination (since the Ceey study shows that darker-skinned people face more unequal treatment in the labor market); ensuring that all communities have access to quality public goods and services, such as good schools; breaking traditional models to guarantee women’s participation in social and political life; integrating the population — regardless of their background — into the formal economy; and ensuring a basic level of well-being.

“Ultimately, it’s about the state being present through public policy, guaranteeing goods and services, and having the capacity — thanks to the social contract — to help people most affected by adversity absorb the shock,” Vélez explains.

María Mancilla couldn’t face a more difficult reality. She works all week cleaning two homes in the Roma neighborhood, and once a month she does a long ironing shift in Condesa — two of the wealthiest areas in Mexico City. She also cares for her 72-year-old husband, who suffers from heart disease and diabetes. While he is treated through the public health system, he sometimes needs medications that aren’t available there. “We have to buy them, and yes, they’re expensive,” she says. Between medicine, food, and debt payments, the $375 she earns quickly disappears — an all-too-common reality for those born into poverty in Mexico.

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“Thank you, president, thank you for stepping into the ring against addiction,” said Julio César Chávez, the five-time boxing champion and national icon in Mexico, to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum during the morning press conference on March 28, where a mass boxing class aimed at deterring drug use was announced.

Sheinbaum smiled as the boxer presented her with a watch from the World Boxing Council. Today, those smiles seem to have vanished. Nearly 100 days after that scene, the arrest of Julio César Chávez Jr. — boxer and son of the former champion — for immigration issues has exposed a pending arrest warrant in Mexico from 2023. The case links him to the Sinaloa Cartel and has opened a new flashpoint in the already strained relationship between the two countries.

There are many questions, but the main one is: how was a man wanted by Mexican authorities for over a year able to move freely on both sides of the border? Which country failed to act — and why? Which security agencies looked the other way? These are just some of the unanswered questions surrounding the boxer’s arrest. In Mexico, the answer seems clear. “The United States knew exactly who he was, knew he was a criminal, and did not detain him,” said Alejandro Gertz Manero, Mexico’s Attorney General, on Tuesday, placing the blame on the U.S. for the inconsistencies in the case.

The charges against Chávez Jr. in Mexico are serious: organized crime and arms trafficking. According to Gertz Manero, the investigation by Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office (FGR), launched at the request of the U.S. government, links Chávez’s eldest son to the Sinaloa Cartel — a criminal group designated as a terrorist organization by the Trump administration and currently mired in internal war between factions.

“They had all the information needed to arrest him, and it was their responsibility,” Gertz said. “He was there, they had reported him, they had presented the evidence, and they knew exactly what was happening. So much so that they arrested him, and the current U.S. authorities are now accusing the previous ones of failing to act.”

The Chávez case has placed the Mexican government in a difficult position. The investigations — according to Gertz — began in 2019 and were driven by the U.S. government. President Sheinbaum has claimed she was unaware of them.

In contrast, the Chávez family did know, said Julio César Chávez in an interview with El Heraldo. When asked if he was aware of the arrest warrants, the former champion replied: “Yes, we were informed, but that was about three years ago. There was never any summons, no phone call… Strange that it’s only now coming to light, right?”

Julio César Chávez Jr.’s movements between Mexico and the United States — despite an active arrest warrant — his high-profile fight against Jake Paul in Anaheim, California, which was broadcast the day after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ordered his deportation, and the apparent concealment of the investigation in Mexico have raised a number of unanswered questions.

“Why did they let my son fight if he was a criminal?” Chávez Sr. asked, questioning the motives behind the U.S. government’s decision to detain his son now.

The family’s ties to the Guzmán clan have been acknowledged by both father and son. “Ovidio Guzmán, ‘El Ratón’ [son of Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán], is the uncle of the girl who has been like a daughter to me for a long time. I know him well — he’s a great person to me,” Chávez Jr. said during a live broadcast in 2022.

In the same video, he said that he socializes with many people, including El Chapo’s son: “I get along well with Ovidio, though we don’t really see each other. I care for him a lot and I don’t want to know anything about what people say about him. I’m not interested.”

The patriarch of the Chávez dynasty has said the same. “Do I know those people? I do. And so what? I know them too, and that doesn’t mean I’m a drug trafficker. But hey, everyone does their job, and that deserves respect,” he said.

The head of the Chávez family has expressed similar views. “Do I know those people? Yes, I do,” he said.

The political undertones that may be behind the boxer’s arrest remain uncertain. Gertz Manero, like Chávez Sr., has also hinted at this possibility. “The information provided by the American authorities has been very clear: they knew he had an arrest warrant, that he was able to live and was settled in the United States, that he had gotten married. All that information was available. Why did they use it now, and why did they do it in this way? That is their responsibility,” the Attorney General concluded.

The Mexican government is awaiting the immigration hearing that will determine the details of Chávez’s deportation to Mexico, where the prosecutor’s office is already waiting to enforce the arrest warrant.

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