Mexico’s cartels ‘boxed in’ by Trump’s success at the border

Jose Kincinia De Jesus Villagran-Perez left Guatemala in early February and made it to Reynosa, just south of the U.S. border — where he sat and waited. And waited.

He later told Border Patrol agents that there weren’t enough people for the smugglers to make a run across the border. They finally cobbled together a group of four Guatemalans, who were sent across and quickly nabbed.

What President Trump has done at the border is almost unfathomable, and Mr. Villagran-Perez’s case gets to the heart of it.

A year ago in February, more than 23,000 Guatemalans made a run at the southern border. Last month, agents reported fewer than 1,500.

It’s the same across all demographics.

In February 2024, agents caught 106 Romanians. Last month, they encountered only one. Numbers have plummeted among Venezuelans, Mexicans, Chinese and Haitians.

The drop has had ripple effects across the Western Hemisphere. Migrants making their way up the spine of the Americas are turning around in the middle of their journeys. In the U.S., deportation officers once assigned to help process people at the border are now helping arrest and deport people in the interior.

The Mexican cartels’ incomes are taking hits, experts say, as smugglers come to grips with Mr. Trump’s crackdowns.

“The cartels have got to be feeling boxed in like never before,” said Todd Bensman, a border expert at the Center for Immigration Studies. “I think they’re going to lash out. That’s what they do. If past is prologue, they’re going to lash out violently, I think sooner rather than later.”

Cartels have raised smuggling prices to make up some of the difference.

Agents didn’t state in court documents how much Mr. Villagran-Perez paid to be smuggled into the U.S. Another Guatemalan caught with him said he paid 130,000 quetzals, or nearly $17,000, for his journey.

That fee has become typical for Central Americans, according to The Washington Times’ database of border smuggling cases. Some are paying nearly $30,000. Mexicans now regularly pay $10,000, sometimes more than double that rate. One Chinese migrant nabbed in California reported paying $75,000, though $20,000 to $40,000 is more typical.

On average, those rates are significantly higher than cartels charged a year ago.

“It’s a business,” said Emilio Gonzalez, head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Bush administration. “We gave the cartels and every other nefarious group of people, in addition to airlines, an opportunity to make zillions of dollars.”

The plummeting border numbers have other effects.

For the first time since the government began reporting monthly figures in early 2022, Border Patrol agents detected no crossings by people on the terrorist watch list.

The number of migrants with known criminal records detected also fell, along with suspected gang members. Border Patrol agents reported encountering just a single Tren de Aragua member in February, down from about four monthly last fall, and just two MS-13 members, down from about eight monthly last fall.

Mr. Trump’s defenders say his early success at the border punctures President Biden’s arguments that the border chaos was the result of international forces spurring people to leave their homes and couldn’t be solved without more action from Congress.

“This proves that it could have been stopped and they had no interest in stopping it,” Mr. Gonzalez said.

Border Patrol agents nabbed nearly 250,000 illegal immigrants at the southern border in December 2023, averaging about 50,000 a month for the last six months of the Biden administration. In February, that fell to fewer than 8,400.

A little more than half of those, 4,237, were Mexicans. More than 70,000 Mexicans were reported during some months of the Biden administration.

Guatemalans were second, and Hondurans were third.

The nontraditional sending countries are where things have really changed.

In December 2023, the peak month for the Biden migrant surge, nearly 43,000 Cubans were caught at the U.S.-Mexico border. Last month, it was 107 — a 99.7% drop. Venezuela went from nearly 47,000 in the peak month to 125 — a 99.7% drop. The number of Colombians fell from 17,572 to 126 — a 99.3% drop.

The gains go beyond the southwestern border.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which mans the airports, seaports and official land border crossings, shut down Mr. Biden’s legally iffy “parole” programs.

That cut the number of unauthorized migrants at ports of entry from more than 100,000 a month last summer to fewer than 20,000 in February.

Panama, a chokepoint on the path for migrants from South America, said it detected just 408 people traversing the Darien Gap, its border with Colombia, in February. That was down more than 75% from January and more than 80% from the average month in 2024.

InSight Crime said that upended the smuggling economy in that region, disrupting the income stream of the Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia, a crime syndicate that used to make tens of millions of dollars annually from migrant smuggling.

InSight Crime said the AGC is turning to other illegal activities, such as extorting cattle ranchers.

In Mexico, the cartels are also facing serious pressure.

Mr. Trump ordered some of them to be declared terrorist organizations, denting their ability to move money. It also could crimp their relations with corrupt Mexican officials, who must worry about accusations of delivering material support to terrorists if they cooperate with the cartels.

The U.S. is making spy flights to report on the cartels’ activities, bringing intelligence unimaginable to Mexican officials in years part.

Mr. Bensman said he expects the cartels to increase drug smuggling to try to make up for the lost migrant smuggling revenue.

Victor Manjarrez Jr., a former senior official with the U.S. Border Patrol who now teaches at the University of Texas at El Paso, said he also expects more drug smuggling and renewed cartel efforts to extort legitimate businesses in Mexico.

“The cartels never lose money in the long run,” Mr. Manjarrez said.