President Trump’s border buildup has been so successful that America’s southern neighbors are dealing with a startling new problem: migrants streaming south, trying to return home after realizing they wouldn’t make it to the U.S.
Panama and Costa Rica officials met this week to discuss details for handling the flow. The steady stream could become a flood as people waiting in Mexico for a shot at the U.S. give up.
The U.S. is trying to help by orchestrating flights to get the migrants out of Central America and back to their home countries.
“We want to guarantee an orderly, legal, humanitarian and safe migratory flow,” Mario Zamora Cordero, Costa Rica’s minister of public security, said after Tuesday’s meeting with Panama. “This meeting marks the beginning of a coordination that seeks to ensure the return of migrants to their countries of origin in adequate conditions.”
The Washington Times viewed internal documents from the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection that described some of the incidents.
Nicaraguan border authorities were surprised by 26 migrants heading south from Honduras. Nicaragua initially refused entry but, after negotiations, let them cross under the promise that they would “continue en route to their country of origin.”
The migrants — 23 from Venezuela and three from Cuba, some traveling as families with children in tow — had been headed north and got as far as Tegucigalpa, in Honduras, when they looked at what awaited them at the U.S.-Mexico border. That was when they gave up.
“The migrants had been United States-bound but due to increased security on the Southwest Border, they decided to return to their countries of origin,” the CBP document read.
Last week, Honduran officials encountered a bus with 23 migrants that was returning south after an aborted trip to the U.S.
The 23 migrants reached Mexico before realizing their journey was futile.
“Upon learning about the multi-agency force security on the Southwest Border in social media and through family members in the United States, the migrants decided to return to their country of origin,” CBP said.
They surrendered to Mexico’s immigration agency, which sent them back to Guatemala, where they caught the bus to take them into Honduras. Honduran authorities let the migrants continue.
Mr. Trump declared a border emergency on his first day in office and surged resources to deal with it in a series of executive actions. He has limited asylum claims, deployed the military to help with deportation flights and increased prosecutions of border crimes.
Under threat of crippling tariffs, Mexico has agreed to do more to stop the flow of people and drugs heading north. That includes deploying 10,000 more of its national guard troops.
The results are stunning.
Border Patrol agents, who at the height of the Biden border surge detected 10,000 illegal immigrants daily at the southern border, are now reporting days of fewer than 500.
“You talk to agents on the line, in their entire careers they’ve never seen crossing days as low as what they’re experiencing right now,” Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s domestic policy adviser, said this week.
The lower chance of success in gaining a foothold in the U.S. has changed the calculation for migrants, who now face a greater possibility of having paid thousands of dollars with nothing to show.
That has likely boosted the numbers heading south.
Panamanian news accounts this week reported that hundreds of migrants were waiting along the border between Costa Rica and Panama after giving up hope of reaching the U.S.
“We went in search of a dream, but now we are going back home,” one Venezuelan migrant told Newsroom Panama.
The Tico Times in Costa Rica said the southbound flow “shows an upward trend.”
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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