‘We are very scared’: Fear grips migrant families on both sides of the border over Trump deportations

Perched outside one of the nearly 40 tents at a migrant shelter in Tijuana, Emir Mejía smiles as she gently rocks her 15-day-old granddaughter. This has been her family’s home for over six months as they await an appointment to seek asylum in the United States.

The night before, her joy at welcoming her seventh granddaughter quickly turned to concern as U.S. voters elected former President Donald Trump to a second term in the White House, where he has promised mass deportations.

The fear and uncertainty Mejia and her family now face is shared with many migrants waiting in shelters for their turn to present their cases to U.S. officials — but also with nearly 2 million already living in California.

“Maybe a lot of people don’t understand,” she said in Spanish. “We don’t want to cross (to the U.S.) for pleasure, but to protect our lives.”

Trump has always taken a tough stance on immigration — something that resonated with his supporters.

During his previous tenure, he replaced the old U.S.-Mexico border fence with a taller one and launched the Migrant Protection Protocols, a policy that sent asylum seekers back to Mexico to await their hearings. The Biden administration ended that practice.

During the height of the pandemic, the Trump administration also enacted a policy known as Title 42, which allowed officials to expel migrants without screening their asylum claims, on the grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19. Although the policy remained in place for the first years of the Biden administration, it was lifted in May 2023.

This time Trump campaigned heavily on securing the border and mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. “We’re gonna have to seal up those borders,” Trump reiterated this week during his victory speech. “We want people to come back in, but we have to let them come back in. But they have to come in legally.”

Mejía, 45, said they “want to do things right” and have not considered other options to cross because they don’t want to put themselves in a risky situation.

Asylum hopes remain despite uncertainty

José María García, director of the Juventud 2000 migrant shelter in Tijuana, described the mood at the site as “a state of fear, anxiety and uncertainty.”

“They knew things were about to change,” he added, referring to Wednesday morning, when many found out about the outcome of the election.

Three miles away, at the Casa del Migrante shelter, it’s a similar scenario. People have been asking, “What’s going to happen?” since election night, said Pat Murphy, a priest who is the shelter’s director. “There’s a lot of questions,” he said.

Ramón Torres, 18, also from Michoacán, has been waiting for an appointment in Tijuana for three months.

Torres, who works for a construction company while he waits at the shelter with his family, said they are now considering the possibility of staying in Tijuana. “If we don’t get an appointment between now and January, we could explore the possibility of staying here,” he said. But he said their hope is to seek asylum in the U.S., and reunite with his father.

Both migrant shelters in Tijuana visited by the San Diego Union-Tribune said they’ve recently seen an increase in those arriving to the shelters after being deported.

In June the Biden administration implemented an executive order restricting asylum and imposed stricter consequences for those who cross without authorization.

As a result, migrant encounters decreased along the southwestern border by 55%, and deportations increased, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s latest data. From June through the end of September, the Department of Homeland Security removed or returned more than 160,000 individuals to over 145 countries.

The directors of both shelters also said they could expect more people to arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border in the weeks leading up to Trump’s inauguration. The Biden administration is already making contingency plans for a potential spike, according to an NBC News report.

A CBP spokesperson said Friday that “while border encounters remain at historic lows, CBP remains vigilant to constantly shifting migration patterns.”

“Migrants should not believe the lies of smugglers. The fact remains: The United States continues to enforce immigration law. Individuals who enter the U.S. unlawfully between ports of entry will continue to be quickly removed,” the spokesperson added.

Officials said that DHS leadership regularly holds meetings to discuss border operations, and these include ongoing contingency planning and preparedness.

Trump’s promise of mass deportation could potentially impact California more than any other state.

There were about 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. as of 2022, the latest year for which federal and Pew Research Center estimates are available. About 1.8 million of them lived in California, according to Pew, more than any other state — even though California’s share of the U.S.’s undocumented immigrant population has decreased in recent years.

Undocumented immigrants made up about 4.5% of the state’s total population and 17% of all California’s immigrants, according to Pew’s estimates. About 9% of K-12 students in California have at least one parent who is an undocumented immigrant.

The population of undocumented immigrants has likely grown since 2022, Pew researchers say, as the U.S. backlog of asylum cases has more than doubled from about 500,000 in mid-2022 to more than 1.1 million at the end of 2023. In the past two years the Biden administration has also allowed hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Ukraine, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to temporarily reside in the U.S. as parolees via humanitarian programs.

Many welcome Trump’s more strict immigration policy.

In mid-September, county Supervisor Jim Desmond told lawmakers on the House Homeland Security Committee in Washington that the arrival of so many migrants has strained the county’s resources and raised concerns about how people entering the country were being screened for security threats.

Now that Trump has been reelected, Desmond said those concerns will likely subside.

“I’m looking forward to not having hundreds of thousands of unchecked people from around the world being dropped in the streets of San Diego County,” he said Friday in a statement. “I’m looking forward to not having boats being driven up upon our beaches and dozens of unchecked people from around the world walking into our neighborhoods.”

‘We are very scared’

At Perkins K-8 in Barrio Logan, where 40% of the school’s more than 300 students speak a native language other than English, some parents are frightened.

In the past two years Perkins has seen an increase of families enrolling at the school who fled unrest and violence in their home countries in Central and South America, especially Venezuela. The school has been working not just to teach them English, but has supported them as they heal from the traumas they experienced on their journey here and helped them find housing, supplies and other resources.

Principal Fernando Hernández has heard from some Perkins families who are fearful of being deported or having their work permits revoked under a Trump administration.

Zulynel Ferrer, 28, is an asylum seeker from Venezuela awaiting her court date set for 2027. Her oldest daughter is 7 and attends Perkins. On Tuesday, she said several migrants living in a San Diego homeless shelter were monitoring the election results. “We are very scared,” Ferrer said.

She fled extortion and violence from Colombia, where she initially thought she would find a better life. Ferrer, her husband, and two daughters made it to the U.S. border in May after a treacherous trek that included passing bodies along their path.

Once in San Diego County, she and her family lived in a tent at Cesar Chavez Park for two months. The camp was later cleared by port authorities.

Ferrer has found some relief at Perkins. Her oldest daughter, who witnessed most of her family’s hardships, is finally settling in, making new friends, learning English and participating in school activities.

Ferrer said she is worried about losing the peace and safety she has just found for her daughters.

Carly Bresee, a special education teacher who has taught for six years at Perkins, worries how Trump’s promises of mass deportation will play out for her students.

“The uncertainty is overwhelming … nobody knows what’s going to happen,” Bresee said. “I just feel sad for our students and families who are trying to find pathways to citizenship. It will become more difficult for them. I’m sad for the families who have come so far and suffered so much to be facing the possibility of just being kicked out.”

Defending the rights of asylum seekers

Migrant and human rights organizations here and across the country are preparing to fight Trump’s policies.

“The Trump administration will face an immigrants’ rights movement that is stronger than ever before,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, CEO of the Los Angeles-based Immigrant Defenders Law Center, in a statement.

“We believe Trump when he promises to enact disastrous policies that aim to tear families apart, destabilize communities, and weaken our economy,” she said. “But the U.S. Constitution didn’t disappear overnight. We will use all the tools we have to protect and defend the rights of all immigrants and asylum seekers.”

Adriana Jasso, program coordinator for the U.S.-Mexico border program of the American Friends Service Committee, urged immigrant families in the country to get information about their rights. She said the organization is currently gathering and updating information with resources and legal orientation to assist the community.

“It’s natural that there’s uncertainty,” she said Wednesday as she stood in front of the U.S.-Mexico border fence where she and other volunteers have been offering assistance to migrants waiting to be picked up for processing by the Border Patrol.

But Jasso noted that “we’ve seen this movie before.”

“We’ve already been through four years (of the Trump administration),” she said. “The most important thing is that instead of panicking, people should get informed.”

But even then, the process to seek asylum will be more difficult.

Trump has said he plans to end the Biden administration’s cellphone app used by asylum seekers to schedule appointments to present themselves at ports of entry for asylum screening. From January 2023 to September 2024 about 852,000 people had used the app to schedule appointments, according to CBP.

The wait can be long, up to nine months, according to a recent report by the Strauss Center at the University of Texas at Austin. The long wait has led thousands of migrants to cross from areas between ports of entry and turn themselves in to the U.S. Border Patrol.

Back at the Tijuana shelter, Mejía is helping in the kitchen as she always does, preparing to serve meals to the 130 migrants currently waiting for an appointment.

Mejía shared that one of the other cooks used to live near her house in the same neighborhood in Michoacán, but they only met for the first time at the shelter in Tijuana.

It looks like a normal day with all of the chatter and laughter, but an undercurrent of fear and uncertainty pulse through the shelter.

Mejía and her family left Michoacán to escape the violence, and she said they can’t go back. “We all pray to God that there is a chance for us to be let in the U.S.,” she said.

(Staff writer Emily Alvarenga contributed to this report.)