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A sense of despair has engulfed the migrant camp of La Soledad, named after the colonial-era church that towers over the shantytown in downtown Mexico City.
It was supposed to be a temporary stop, a place to regroup and wait for the right moment to continue on toward the United States.
Then President Trump issued decrees that effectively shut down migration along the U.S.-Mexico border, leaving tens of thousands of migrants marooned in camps, shelters and other accommodations across Mexico, from the southern hinterlands to the Rio Grande.
The Trump administration cancelled a program aimed at easing the process of applying for asylum, leaving thousands of asylum-seekers disappointed and unsure of what to do next.
Despondent and broke — many sold homes, borrowed cash, paid smugglers and left children behind in pursuit of the American dream — they now face an existential reckoning: What next?
“There’s great uncertainty right now,” said Manuela Pérez Jerónimo, a 47-year-old from Guatemala who was roasting potatoes over charcoal. “No one knows anything. Will we be able to cross the border? Will we all get deported?”
The Times spoke to some of the 1,500 or so denizens of La Soledad as they weighed their three main options: turn back, wait and see, or push on.
Mexico’s President Sheinbaum says she will work with Trump on deportations, border issues and cartels, but laughs at his ‘Gulf of America’ order.
Giving up the dream
There is no census, and migrants come and go, but the majority of people in La Soledad appear to be from Venezuela, the once-wealthy South American nation that has seen an exodus of more than 7 million amid an economic, social and political crackup.
“It became impossible to make a living,” said Jormaris Figuera Fernández, 42, speaking outside a shack of plywood planks and a tarpaulin canopy that she shares with her husband.
The two left Venezuela six years ago, at first joining legions of fellow citizens in neighboring Colombia, where the couple worked in construction, in the coffee fields and other jobs. They later tried their luck in Brazil and Chile, before returning to Colombia.
Then in 2023 they set out for the United States, a perilous trip that began in the Darién Gap, the unforgiving strip of rainforest between Colombia and Panama.
Mexico’s president pokes fun at Trump’s suggestion to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
“We heard a lot of people were crossing the jungle — even some with crutches, very overweight people, pregnant women,” said Figuera. “We figured we could do it too.”
It took six weeks to reach Mexico. For more than a year, Figuera cleaned houses in the southern state of Chiapas while her husband worked in the fields.
Mexico’s president walks a fine line between pleasing her constituents and placating Trump.
The two eventually made their way to Mexico City, paying about $200 for their shanty in La Soledad. It features a bed, a couch, throw rugs, a table and a hot plate that, like other appliances in the camp, runs off pirated electricity. It costs about 25 cents each time they use the restroom in a nearby bar.
Following Trump’s election in November, hundreds fled La Soledad, embarking for the border with the idea of crossing into U.S. territory before he took office.
But Figuera and her husband remained, hopeful of gaining legal entry — unlike her son, who, she said, was twice caught crossing the border illegally, spent four months in U.S. custody and is now in New York awaiting a deportation hearing.
“He said it’s very hard, very cold, and extremely difficult to find work without papers,” Figuera said.
Faced with Trump’s shut-the-border dictates, the couple has relented: They plan to return to Colombia — once they figure out a way to get there.
“We came here with a dream, with a purpose — to arrive to the United States to help our families,” Figuera said, tears welling in her eyes. “We are going back now with nothing. Depressed. Deflated. We have failed.”
Waiting and seeing
The two boys, aged 2 and 4, romped through the labyrinth of La Soledad, under lines of drying laundry, past deliverymen pushing stacked handcarts and carpenters hammering away at tottering structures.
“Its not a great place for kids,” said their mother, Alexandra Roa, 21, standing in front of the family’s plywood-and-plastic dwelling.
They have been in Mexico for seven months.
Bracing for Trump and his threatened migrant roundups, Mexico aims to roll out a ‘panic app’ for Mexican nationals facing deportation from the United States.
“We are disillusioned, desperate,” said Roa, who left Venezuela at age 16, settling in Chile for several years before heading toward the United States. “I try to distract myself. But at times I begin to cry and cry.”
Fueling her anxiety are reports of mass deportations, separations of families and military deployments along the U.S. border.
“We don’t want to take the risk of going to the border and then something really bad happens,” Roa said.
How will Mexican leaders respond if, as expected, Trump pressures them to accept deportees from third countries? ‘Mexico is in a really tough spot.’
She and her husband have decided to wait and see what happens, at least for a few months. He has found work downtown lugging heavy merchandise, pocketing about $10-$15 a day.
She said she prays that some spectral force or improbable pang of conscience will “touch the heart” of Trump.
Her two kids wandered back. It was lunch hour in La Soledad, the air punctuated with the rhythm of cumbia and salsa blaring from boom boxes.
Pushing on
“It was like someone took a pail of ice water and dumped it on my head,” said Dixon Camacho.
He was recalling Jan. 20, Inauguration Day, when word filtered back to La Soledad that Trump had ditched the cellphone application known as CBP One, which more than 900,000 migrants have used to make appointments with U.S. border agents and legally enter the United States.
Depending on whom you ask, the federal immigration app CBP One is a solution to the border crisis, a human rights violation or a ploy to let anyone into the U.S.
After months of waiting, Camacho had scored a cherished appointment in El Paso for Feb. 4. Now it was canceled.
“I was left without words, with fear, anger, frustration,” said Camacho, 50, who leaned on a couch in a kind of open-air living room in La Soledad. “I wondered: ‘What now? Where do I go? What do I do?’“
A widower, he is the father of six children — adult sons and daughters in Ecuador, Brazil and Argentina, and a pair of teenagers who remain in Venezuela.
He was a transport dispatcher in Venezuela, earning enough to care comfortably for his family — and once even taking a lavish vacation in Brazil.
“Now, we Venezuelans are the poor ones,” said Camacho, who sported a Chicago Bulls cap and jacket in honor of Michael Jordan — though his jacket bears No. 22, not Jordan’s famous 23.
He left Venezuela in January 2024, intending to join a brother in Texas.
On two occasions, Camacho hopped freight trains to the Mexican border state of Chihuahua, placing him on the verge of entering the United States — only to be detained by Mexican immigration agents, who bused him back to southern Mexico.
Settling in Mexico is not an option, Camacho insisted, though the Trump administration plans to ship asylum seekers arriving at the border back to Mexico to await U.S. adjudication of their cases.
“In Mexico you basically earn enough to live,” said Camacho. “I haven’t been able to send a single peso back to my kids, my mother.”
He plans to hit the rails north again, even if it means crossing the border illegally. He said he and his friends from La Soledad were mapping out a route.
“We’re all like family here,” Camacho said. “I’m ready to go right now.”
Soon, he said, they would be on their way, undeterred by walls, barbed wire, troops and presidential decrees.
Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.
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