Tuesday

TIJUANA, Mexico . — Mexican day laborers detained while working began to be deported to Mexico while at various points on the border with the United States the construction of new spaces to house migrants and face the mass deportations announced by Donald Trump was accelerated. About 70 deportees in what could be some of the first raids of the new U.S. administration arrived in Tijuana in small groups over about three hours Tuesday night, some dressed in work clothes carrying orange bags with their belongings. Migrants who were deported from the United States to Mexico wave as they are transported to a shelter as they cross the El Chaparral pedestrian border bridge in Tijuana, Mexico, on the evening of Tuesday, January 21, 2025. (Felix Marquez/AP) As a man shouted from a distance to a small group of journalists, they were detained on Tuesday while they were working as day laborers in Denver, Colorado. Another migrant said he had been arrested in Oregon without giving further details. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum confirmed on Wednesday that there were returns the day before and, without specifying, indicated that the numbers were lower than usual. In 2024, according to official data, more than 500 Mexicans were deported daily on average along the entire border. This month, through one point alone, Nogales, on the border with Arizona, about 150 were deported daily, according to data from the Kino Initiative shelters. On an empty lot next to the border in Ciudad Juárez, next to El Paso, workers used cranes to erect large metal structures that would later become shelters. In Nogales, sports centers were set up to serve migrants. In Matamoros, spaces were expanded in shelters already operating and to the south of Piedras Negras the authorities announced that they wanted to enable empty industrial warehouses for the same purpose. Sheinbaum said Wednesday that the nine federal centers located in municipalities adjacent to the 11 official people repatriation points would be ready in three or four days. The president emphasized that formal conversations with the new US administration have also begun with a call between Mexican Foreign Minister Juan Ramón de la Fuente and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday. “It was a very good conversation, very cordial, they talked about migration issues, security issues,” Sheinbaum said without giving more details. In addition to the nine new centers, the federal government plans to use some existing ones in Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez and Matamoros where, as explained by Ariadna Montiel, Secretary of Welfare, foreigners who had an appointment to request asylum in the United States but who were canceled when Trump paralyzed the CBPOne virtual application. However, Sheinbaum has insisted that Mexico’s objective with foreigners, both those who were waiting for an appointment and those who are returned due to the reinstatement of the “Remain in Mexico” program – which returns asylum seekers while they wait for their hearing in court Americans—is to first give them humanitarian care and then return them to their countries voluntarily.