Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Madi Glang Rodriguez woke up early on the morning of November sixth and checked her phone. She wanted to see who had won the US presidential election. She opened TikTok, saw that Donald Trump
had won, and cried. She cried because she and her family are currently in Mexico trying to get to the US to seek asylum, an immigration status granted to people fleeing persecution and violence in their home countries, and Trump has promised to tighten restrictions on immigration into the country and deport thousands of migrants from the US on day one. Now, his election has given Matti Glang and her family fresh
urgency to make it across the border. She told my colleague Maya Aberbach that they've given them selves a deadline Inauguration day because she fears if her family doesn't make it to the US by then, they might never Madi Gleang and her family left their home in Venezuela in July. They've been stuck in Mexico since September. Fresh immigration crackdowns from both Mexico and the US have left them stranded waiting for an asylum appointment that might give them a
shot at a new life. This year, a growing number of migrants from all over the world have taken the perilous journey to Mexico, sometimes making it all the way to the US Mexico border, only to find themselves in a similar spot. Alex Vasquez is a Bloomberg journalist covering politics and economics from Mexico City. He and Maya who You Heard a moment ago, have been speaking with asylum seekers in Mexico about what is second Trump term could mean for them.
They're afraid that they won't be able to enter the US. They're afraid that their family in the US will be deported and that will obviously reduce their options. And they're afraid that if they get an appointment to legally enter the US, they could even be deported.
Alex says, they're asking themselves, will they be able to make it into the US before Trump takes office, and if not, what other options do they have? Today on the show, how new immigration restrictions have left tens of thousands of migrants in limbo and how Trump's reelection could keep them there. This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder to get into Mexico, Mati Glang, her husband, and their three children took the dangerous path followed by
so many South American migrants. They crossed the Darien Gap. Then they were held for ransom on the border between Guatemala and Mexico. Madi Gleang said they paid the one hundred dollars ransom each and were released, but making it to Mexico was only the beginning. Bloomberg's Alex Vasquez says that until recently, most migrants in Mexico pursued asylum in one of two ways. Some would cross the border into the US without documents and then turn themselves into immigration
authorities to request asylum. Once they got.
There, normally they have to go to a court appointment, you know, and they will be monitored until the judge decided their cases, but they could enter the US.
Others followed the official process, which started with securing an asylum appointment with US Customs on the Mexican side of the border. These appointments are scheduled through an app called CBP one.
Most of them are applying for the CVP one appointment, which is pretty much an appointment that allows them to have like an official appointment with a US official in the border, so they want to have a legal way to enter the US.
These CBP one appointments could only be made from certain parts of Mexico and they can take weeks or months to get.
You need to have like a pretty decent smartphone to use it. You can imagine that migrants don't have like the best smartphones available because they don't have enough money. I met migrants that got the appointment and they're now in a legal way in the US, and they got the appointment in a couple of weeks. Sometimes it happens, but it's like a lottery. I mean, you don't know when you're going to get it.
Alex says either route was long and circuitous and only sometimes resulted in legal status. But in the past year it's gotten even harder.
Right now they're having a more difficult time because since the beginning of this year, the US government started like a negotiation with the Mexican government to try to reduce border crossings.
Last December, US Secretary of State Anthony Blincoln visited Mexico and put pressure on the country to step up border enforcement, and the summer, the Biden administration started a new policy of essentially freezing all asylum applications during surges of migration.
This is in the context of the US election, so the Biden administration was really focused on reducing border crossings.
There was one exception to the US asylum freeze. Migrants could still use the CBP one app to schedule an appointment before arriving at the border, and as of this August, they were allowed to apply not just from central cities and northern cities near the border, they could apply from the south of the country too. That pushed many more people to apply for these appointments within Mexico rather than
risk entering the US. Meanwhile, the Mexican government responded to the US's pressure with a strategy change of its own last year.
Migrants could go to northern cities like Tijuana, for example, like suahua Is where they could wait. The Mexican government realizes, if we have people in the north, we won't be able to reduce border crossings, so we need to keep them south.
Keep them south, in other words, send them down towards the Guatemalan border.
Mexico is sending migrants to two states of the south of the country this is the states of Chiappas and Tabasco, to really small cities that are not prepared to see them.
Waiting wasn't exactly easy in the north, Alex said, but at least there were some jobs and existing infrastructure. That's not the case in the south.
They don't have job opportunity, work permits, any kind of support, so they're pretty much in the streets begging for money, with not much to do, selling candies in the street, washing cars. Obviously, sometimes they can get, you know, some job offers from criminal groups trying to you know, seek women and engage them in prostitution and stuff like that, so it's pretty hard to them.
According to documents obtained by the Institute for Women and Migration, the Mexican government has moved more than one hundred and thirty thousand people by bus in the first nine months of this year. Their first stop is typically a detention center that's where asylum seekers are screened and processed, but when they're released, they often end up on the street. Alex saw this happen in via Hermosa, the capital of the southern Mexico state of Tabasco.
I was able to witness the exact moment when a group of migrants around thirty or leaving this attention center, they just arrived to this vier Mosa city. They give them a couple packages tuna at the shelter. They didn't know where they were. They only know the name of the city, but they weren't aware this is in the south, in the border with Guatemala. They didn't know anything about that.
So so disorienting.
Yeah, no fun because they were wrapped in the journey and pretty much they Okay, ask where am I try to figure out what I'm going to do next? I saw people. They don't speak Spanish, they don't speak English. They use tipt with the workers at the shelter to communicate. They don't get any information.
What does the Mexican government say should happen as migrants are waiting for appointments to request asylum in the US.
Well, we interview the former Foreign first Minister, Alicia Larsena. What she told us and what the government is saying is that they're moving them south to give them job opportunities in infrastructure projects in the south, because the government is building big infrastructure projects like trains or commercial hubs, and they're saying they can get job opportunities in the construction or even in agricultural projects. And the government is saying the north of the country was packed, was full
of migrants, and authorities were completely overwhelmed. But what we witness is far different from what the government is saying, because these cities in the south, Villa Moosa, Tapachula in Chapas, are not prepared at all. I mean, almost half of the people in Villa Mosa lives in po so they don't have enough jobs opportunities themselves.
All this has created vulnerabilities that Alexa's criminal gangs have been eager to exploit. Violence and crime are widespread, and migrants in these southern cities are left with few means of protection. And there's a new US president about to enter office who's promised an even harsher immigration crackdown. How Trump's looming inauguration is pushing migrants in Mexico to reassess their options after the break. Mexico's strategy of sending asylum
seekers south has made life harder for migrants. It's also helped bring border crossings down.
This pretty much because the Mexico northern border is northern states are you know, less packed rants who managed to get there are sent back to the South. So this way Mexico helped the US to reduce order a crossing.
And with Trump preparing to take office and threatening an even harsher immigration regime, some migrants told Bloomberg's Alex Vasquez that they are rethinking their dreams of seeking asylum in the US entirely.
Even before Trump mentioned the master deportations. They are aware about who Trump is, and they know what happened in the prior administration, so they're afraid that they won't be able to enter the US. They're afraid that their family in the US will be deported and that will obviously reduce their options. And they're afraid that if they get an appointment to legally enter the US, they could even be deportant. So I also spoke with some migrants that are reassessing their options.
One of those options would be to try to stay in Mexico. They can apply for asylum from that country too, but it's not always a great alternative.
The big problem is that migrants, most of them, don't want to stay in Mexico. But the reality and I think that is what the Mexican government needs to understand is that they don't want to stay here. So while they're waiting to get to the US, sometimes the CVP one appointment can take also a year. Maybe you need to give them some job opportunity or a way to be integrated into your economy, and then they will live because they don't want to stay here, most of them.
There's also an open question around what more Trump might ask the Mexican government to do once he's back in office.
Right now, the Mexican government is facing the tough choice of what's going to happen. I mean, we know Trump already had a phone call with Mexican President Claudia Shanebah some days ago. Trump is threatening to impose twenty five percent tariff on every Mexican expert to the US if Mexico doesn't help to reduce both border crossings of migrants
drug trafficking, especially fentanil. So if we're seeing a crackdown right now, what we can expect is something tougher next year, because Mexico will try to avoid that.
But Alex says the idea that it might get even harder to make it to the US next year is putting pressure on many of the migrants he spoke with. They want to get across the border as soon as possible, with or without an asylum appointment.
They're saying, if I don't get disappointment before January, I'm going to try to go to the US border and cross because Donald Trump is going to eliminate all the path we have right now, and I think we may witness a crossing attempts during the last days of December.
Mari Glang and her family are now staying in a migrant camp in Mexico City, anxiously waiting for a CBP one appointment. It's been hard not knowing what their future holds, when or whether they'll get a meeting with US immigration officials. Es Gang says the process feels like a game of Bingo all luck. She feels like she's quote hanging by a thread that could either break or strengthen. She just doesn't know. This is the big take from Bloomberg News.
I'm Sarah Holder. This episode was produced by Julia Press and Adriana Tapia, who also fact checked this episode. It was edited by Tracy Samuelson and Brendan Walsh. It was mixed and sound designed by Alex Sugia. Special thanks to Maya Aberbach. Our senior producer is Naomi Shavin. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Our executive producer is Nicole Beamster borg Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. If you like this episode, make sure to subscribe and review The
Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps people find the show. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow