US President Donald Trump's hardline policies have stranded tens of thousands of asylum seekers and migrants in Mexico. With few options, many of them have resorted to applying for protection where they are. But Trump’s policies – including cuts to foreign aid – coupled with existing deficiencies, could now push the already overstrained Mexican asylum system to the point of collapse.
So far, the Mexican government hasn’t laid out a clear strategy or designated officials to manage the situation, focusing instead on other priorities such as responding to US tariffs and supporting Mexican deportees, according to Yael Schacher, director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International.
When Trump took office on 20 January, there were around 270,000 people – from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and other countries – in Mexico waiting to try to seek asylum in the US using the US Customs and Border Protection agency’s controversial cellphone application, CBP One. Within hours of Trump’s inauguration, the process for registering for appointments was shut down, and 30,000 existing appointments were canceled.
Some of those left stranded have begun returning to their home countries, retracing their steps along treacherous Latin American migration routes. Others are applying for asylum in Mexico.
In Mexico City, the day after CBP One ended, over 3,000 people camped outside the offices of Mexico’s Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR), which processes asylum claims, until officials implemented a strategy to open up 600 appointment spots per day. Throughout the country, around 1,000 people per day have reportedly been submitting asylum applications, although the Mexican government has yet to release statistics.
A new, recently opened COMAR centre in Tapachula, the largest city on Mexico’s southern border, may help to alleviate some of the pressure on the system. But it was constructed with funds allocated before the Trump administration’s cuts to foreign assistance, which are already affecting COMAR’s budget.
Over the past decade, as it has rapidly become one of the world’s top recipients of asylum applications, Mexico has built up its protection system. In 2013, around 1,300 people applied. By 2023, that number had spiked to over 140,000 before dipping to just under 79,000 last year.
Much of the funding to try to help Mexico cope with the rising numbers has come from the US, funnelled through the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR. The agency received more than $163 million from the US between 2017 and 2023 for its Mexico operations. Between 2019 and 2023, UNHCR’s contribution to COMAR’s budget was more than double what the Mexican government put in.
In 2024, the US contributed nearly 87% of the $57.9 million in funding received by UNHCR for Mexico. Following the Trump administration’s cuts to foreign aid, that assistance has evaporated. Meanwhile, the Mexican government has given no indication that it intends to increase its funding for COMAR to fill the massive gap.
Starved of funds, it’s unclear whether the Mexican asylum system will be able to process claims and provide a modicum of support to those left stranded by the end of CBP One. Also uncertain is whether people applying for protection in Mexico now see it as a long-term solution or just a temporary measure to bide time before once again trying to reach the US.
Based on past experience, community leaders and aid workers working with asylum seekers and migrants in Mexico believe it’s likely to be the latter, and that the shutting down of legal ways to reach the US will further push people to resort to dangerous alternatives, with the cartels that control people smuggling routes standing to benefit.
“US migration policies will only lead to growing organised crime bank accounts,” said Father Francisco Gallardo, head of migrant ministry for the Catholic diocese in the northern Mexican border city of Matamoros. “Most migrants still want to cross the border; we have seen it happening. They want to go to the US, regardless of what Mexico offers them.”
The growth of asylum in Mexico
As the number of people transiting through Mexico to claim asylum in the US skyrocketed over the past decade, the US has leaned heavily on the Mexican government to try to stop people from reaching the US-Mexico border.
In recent years – under both Republican and Democratic US administrations – this has meant pressuring Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM) to erect checkpoints and increase migration controls along roads, railways, and at airports.
The strategy has also involved apprehending migrants in northern border cities and busing them to southern Mexico. Human rights organisations have documented extensive abuses by INM, including torture, sexual assault, and extortion.
“People talk about crossing the [Darién Gap], but they never tell you how hard this process is,” Milagro Cáceres, a 23-year-old from Venezuela who was five months pregnant, told The New Humanitarian at a makeshift camp in Mexico City, comparing the experience of traversing the treacherous stretch of jungle separating Colombia and Panama with crossing Mexico to reach the US.
US support for Mexico’s asylum system has run in parallel with these efforts to block migration, as well as with policies that have whittled away the right to claim asylum in the US, and that have sought to pressure or require people to seek protection in Latin American countries instead.
Against this backdrop, one explanation for the growth in protection claims in Mexico is that people turned to the Mexican asylum system as a way to gain legal protection and reduce the risk of detention by INM while trying to reach the US-Mexico border.
“Many migrants arrived at the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance not necessarily in need of refugee status or seeking protection in Mexico, but instead aiming to secure documentation as a means to cross the country and reach the United States,” Andrés Ramírez, the head of COMAR from 2018 to 2024, told The New Humanitarian.
Mexico, however, requires people who apply for asylum to remain in the state where they submit their application and periodically check in with immigration authorities. Claims are supposed to be processed within 45 days, but in reality they take much longer because of capacity issues at COMAR.
To try to keep up with the growing caseload, the commission increased its number of offices nationwide from four to 13 during Ramírez’s time as head. Dozens of officials were hired to process applications, he said, but COMAR was still understaffed.
Ramírez said around 150,000 people were granted asylum during his time leading the commission – one out of every five who applied. Some claims were denied, and many people abandoned the process part of the way through to continue north. Of those granted asylum, he said it was almost impossible to know how many had decided to stay in Mexico.
A question of will
Actions taken by the Trump administration since it entered office in January have effectively ended access to asylum at the US-Mexico border, according to Amnesty International, violating both US and international legal obligations.
But the existing bureaucratic backlog at COMAR, the Trump-induced funding crisis, shortcomings of integration programmes in Mexico, and the never-ending US pull factor raise questions about whether Mexico can – or wants to – offer a viable alternative for those left in limbo, and whether people will want to stay.
Mexico is affected by some of the same issues that have caused many Latin American asylum seekers to flee their homes in other countries, including high levels of cartel and gang violence that also push Mexicans to seek safety in the US. In fact, Mexicans were one of the top three nationalities scheduling asylum appointments through CBP One before it was shut down, behind Venezuelans and Cubans.
Since taking office in October last year, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has continued to implement policies aimed at preventing asylum seekers and migrants from reaching the US-Mexico border, and Trump is instrumentalising the threat of tariffs to push Sheinbaum to crack down further.
During her first four months in office, Sheinbaum did not appoint a director for COMAR. It wasn’t until 24 January – four days after Trump took office – that she nominated the former head of international affairs at INM, Xadeni Méndez, for the role.
What resources COMAR will have to try to respond to the tens of thousands of people now applying for protection is unclear. Schacher, from Refugees International, said she thinks the Trump administration is much more focused on preventing people from crossing into the US than helping them seek asylum in Mexico: “They would prefer for Mexico just to focus on getting people as far away from the United States as possible.”
Challenges of integration
Ultimately, whether people left stranded by the end of CBP One decide to stay in Mexico may depend in large part on their ability to find economic opportunities.
At the beginning of March, UNHCR announced that, since 2016, it has supported 50,000 refugees and asylum seekers to build new lives in Mexican communities through the agency’s Local Integration Programme.
But US funding cuts are already affecting the programme, which sends asylum seekers to cities throughout Mexico to match them with work opportunities.
“We have had to adjust most of our activities, including pausing relocations,” said Giovanni Lepri, UNHCR’s representative in Mexico.
UNHCR recently signed a funding agreement with Japan that aims to provide support and work opportunities with Japanese companies in Mexico to 5,000 asylum seekers and refugees. They have also secured some support from Canada.
“[That] will allow us to do at least one more relocation at the end of April,” Lepri added. “But without new sources of funding, we will have to drastically reduce the objectives of the programme.”
Even seemingly successful integration programmes, however, might not be enough to keep people in Mexico in the longer term.
Like many Haitians, 38-year-old Jean-Alix Plaisir left his country in the aftermath of the country’s devastating 2010 earthquake, spending years in Chile before deteriorating conditions there pushed him, and thousands of others, to head north towards the US.
Stuck at the US-Mexico border in 2021, Plaisir decided to apply for asylum in Mexico. The process took months, instead of the legally prescribed 45 days. “I regret making the journey,” Plaisir told The New Humanitarian over WhatsApp. The abuses from Mexican officials and the long process had broken him, he added.
Eventually, through the UNHCR integration programme, Plaisir was sent to Torreón, in the central state of Coahuila. But even after getting residency and a work permit as an asylee, he struggled financially. He found temporary work as a factory guard, but “I couldn’t make enough money”, he said.
Plaisir initially wanted to stay in Torreón but, as the months passed, other Haitians who had applied for asylum and came to the city around the same time started to leave. In October 2022, he too decided to travel north and entered the US through the humanitarian parole programme that existed at the time. Since then, he has been living with his cousin in Portland, Oregon, where he now works delivering packages for Amazon.
Plaisir’s story resonates with reports from businesses that are part of UNHCR’s integration programme that have said they have issues retaining asylum seekers.
“We’ve invested in training a little over a dozen people since last July, but only one has been willing to stay,” Samaria Pérez, chief of staff at Republic Steel Wire in San Luis Potosí, told The New Humanitarian. “We’ve noticed they are not really interested. They want to be here for a while and then go to the US.”
Asked how many people leave, Lepri said, most participants “have chosen to remain in the country, where they have found stability, formal jobs, and development opportunities for their families,” adding: “Many have become Mexican citizens.”
Biding time
With Trump’s hardline policies, and Mexico stepping up enforcement efforts, the number of people apprehended by US Border Patrol crossing the US-Mexico border irregularly plummeted to its lowest level in decades in February.
But Schacher wonders if these numbers represent a temporary dip or a longer-term trend. “How successful will the Trump administration be in convincing people that the border is closed and asylum in the United States is actually over?” she asked. “There has been so much policy change over time; it makes it unconvincing.”
Instead, people may just be biding their time. That’s the case for Carlos Daniel Mendoza, a 30-year-old Cuban whose appointment to apply for asylum in the US through CBP One was supposed to happen on 7 February but was cancelled when Trump took office.
The New Humanitarian met him standing in line with his wife outside COMAR’s office in Mexico City at the end of January, waiting to apply for asylum in Mexico instead. Mendoza had already been in Mexico City for seven months and had found work at a car wash. He saw asylum as a way to gain legal status and hopefully better work opportunities. “We need more [money] to help our families back home,” he said.
But Mendoza said he wasn’t planning on staying in Mexico indefinitely. “We have been extorted, beaten, and abused while crossing Mexico,” he said, insisting his goal was still to reach the US.
Reporting for this article was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. Edited by Daniela Mohor and Eric Reidy.
