Stranded and starving in Mexico, migrants face mounting challenges as they try to return to their home countries
Under the scorching morning sun, a desperate crowd gathered around an immigration officer in a remote part of Mexico, pleading for seats on outbound flights.
They were not trying to get to the United States, as many of them had hoped to not long ago. Now they were trying to get back to Venezuela -- or simply escape this town -- if only they had the passports, paperwork or the means to leave, News.Az reportes citing the Miami Herald.
There are at least 3,000 Venezuelans stranded in Tapachula, a sweltering city near the southernmost point of Mexico that was once a gateway for migrants entering from Guatemala. Not long ago, thousands trudged through its streets, overflowing shelters and sleeping in courtyards, parks and plazas.
But the city has grown still. Shelters sit empty. Parks where families had crowded lie deserted. Now, the movement is in reverse. One by one, people board buses, retrace their steps by foot, or float back across the Suchiate River -- back to Guatemala, and to their native countries.
They are part of a growing wave of reverse migration: People who, in the face of President Donald Trump’s hard-line policies, have made the painful choice to return to the countries they once fled -- places scarred by violence, poverty and climate change -- abandoning, at least for now, their dreams of a better life.
The thousands who remain in Tapachula lack the paperwork or resources to do anything but wait. Mexico’s immigration restrictions, adopted under pressure from the Biden and Trump administrations, bar them from even leaving the city, and they cannot easily get back to Venezuela, either.
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