Many of the 30,000 migrants in southern Mexico are trying to find work in the country—at least until American policy changes—but they face limited choices. There are few well-paying jobs in Mexico’s poorest state of Chiapas. Criminals target migrants for extortion and kidnapping. To leave Chiapas, where Tapachula is located, for another part of Mexico requires migrants to get asylum, which can take the country’s overwhelmed refugee agency a year to process, said local migrant advocates.

“There’s been a drastic change,” said Yuriria Salvador of Fray Matías de Cordova Human Rights Center, a group offering migrants legal representation and help getting healthcare and education. “In Tapachula, the conditions aren’t there for people to stay. There’s a lack of housing, no jobs and an environment of xenophobia.”

Ecuadorean migrant Johana Velez talks of reaching Monterrey in northern Mexico, where she hopes to find a job. She said she is convinced the border crackdown won’t last forever. But she won’t return to Ecuador after a violent gang left dead rats and dogs in front of her bar to get her to pay extortion money.

“I’ll wait however long is necessary, I’m in no rush,” she said. “The United States isn’t going anywhere.”

Migrants at a shelter in Tapachula in southern Mexico.

Trump administration policies have stopped migration across the southern border cold. In a recent 24-hour period, Customs and Border Protection agents encountered 229 migrants at the southwest border, down from a peak of more than 11,000 daily in the Biden administration, border czar Tom Homan said. U.S. border agents recorded fewer than 9,000 arrests in February, President Trump said, the lowest since record-keeping began in the 1980s.

“They heard my words and they chose not to come,” Trump said of migrants during his speech to U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday.

Sugeidi Cabaña, a nurse, fled Venezuela with her two young children in November after strongman leader Nicolás Maduro declared victory in an election that the U.S. said was stolen. She made it to Tapachula after a harrowing journey that included breaking her leg in a viper-infested jungle.

Now she is pondering whether to stay in Mexico and see if the Trump administration eventually loosens restrictions. She has a father and brother in Alabama she was considering joining.

She is also wondering if she shouldn’t try to stay in Mexico, find a way to get to Canada, or go to Chile, which has a large Venezuelan community and where she once lived.

“But not Venezuela,” she said. “While Maduro is there, I can’t be there.”

People wait in line to register and begin the process of obtaining legal status in Mexico.

Migrants submit their acceptance documents to initiate their registration process for legal status in Mexico.

Mexican officials said they would provide humanitarian assistance to migrants stuck in Mexico. And in Tapachula, a government employment program has provided some migrants with jobs, paying about $250 a month to clean the city’s streets and paint its curbs yellow.

But most foreign migrants stranded in southern Mexico receive little government assistance, driving them to work under the table and live in dilapidated, overcrowded homes. President Claudia Sheinbaum has offered to assist migrants returning to their home countries as her government braces to receive hundreds of thousands of Mexicans deported from the U.S.

Benito Llaven, a lawyer in Tapachula, said the influx of migrants has overwhelmed the city. He blames them for leaving piles of garbage on the streets as they wait outside a government refugee agency near his home. He said that he understands Trump’s immigration crackdown but that it creates a problem here.

“Trump is defending his country, but he’s leaving us the migrants,” said Llaven. “And Tapachula doesn’t have the capacity to take in so many migrants.”

To be sure, many migrants are leaving Mexico, and making the reverse trek home. More than a few, Mexican government officials said, are expected to head for the U.S. border anyway, seeking more dangerous crossings into the American desert.

And not far from Tapachula along a stretch of the brownish Suchiate River that separates Mexico from Guatemala, migrant crossings have all but stopped, a migrant smuggler said.

“There’s barely any work right now. What’s happening in the U.S. is hurting us a lot,” the smuggler said about his business. “There’s uncertainty because the migration rules changed radically, and people don’t know if they can stay long-term in the United States.”

There was a rush of migrants into Tapachula ahead of Trump’s inauguration—people hoping to reach the U.S. before he overhauled immigration policies.

Improvised rafts wait along the Mexican side of the Suchiate River to transport migrants from Guatemala.

Migrants rest inside a shelter in Tapachula, Mexico.

In February, about 1,700 of them had crammed into the Jesus the Good Pastor shelter, a run-down building that was so overwhelmed that migrants slept on the kitchen floor and the outdoor patio. When news spread that Trump canceled CBP One, the government app that facilitated U.S. asylum appointments, many people broke out in tears.

Today, there are about 150 people living at the shelter, where grown-ups cook tortillas while barefoot children lie on a tiled floor and watch Disney movies.

Michel Barajas, a Venezuelan doctor, isn’t sure what she will do. Believing they would have a better life in the U.S., Barajas and 13 family members traveled north in September through the Darién Gap jungle that separates Colombia from Panama, emerging severely dehydrated and hungry, their feet slashed with cuts. After months trekking through Central America, they got to the outskirts of Tapachula, only to be abducted and held captive until a $100 ransom was paid for each person to win their freedom.

CBP One seemed like a godsend. Most of the Barajas clan—including a bevy of small children—got their appointments before Trump took office and got into the U.S. But not Barajas and her 10-year-old son. She is considering trying to make it back to Colombia, where she had lived for years.

“At times, I feel desperate, being here, alone, without family,” Barajas said.

Michel Barajas and her 10-year-old son

Mario Betanco said going home to Honduras isn’t an option. Betanco arrived in southern Mexico in September with his wife and three children after fleeing a gang that controlled his poor neighborhood and that wanted to forcefully recruit his 13-year-old daughter.

“You can’t defend yourself against those guys on your own,” said Betanco, who had hoped to reach Alabama, where his wife’s cousin lives.

In Tapachula, he cleans the city’s streets as part of the government employment program. His family has started the paperwork to receive Mexican asylum. The plan is to head north to Mexico City or Monterrey, where there are better-paying jobs.

“When we arrive and settle down, we’ll put the kids in school,” said Betanco, who also has a 7-year-old daughter and 1-year-old boy. “At least we have food here.”

Honduran Mario Betanco arrived in southern Mexico with his wife and children in September.