Donald Trump Wins, Thousands Of Mexican Migrants Pupus Harapan

UNSPLASH/Barbara Zandoval ILLUSTRATION

JAKARTA - Thousands of migrants traveling together in Mexico's camp are grappling with the next steps after former US President Donald Trump, who ran for one of the anti-immigration jargons, won a second term.

After hearing Trump win, many migrants in the coalition of about 3,000 people departing from the southern city of Tapachula on Tuesday, November 5, are missing hope of their chances of getting a new life in the United States.

"I hope (Kamala Harris) will win, but that's not the case," said Valerie Andrade, a Venezuelan migrant traveling from Chiapas to Oaxaca in southern Mexico.

Andrade, along with her husband, and like more than 7 million other Venezuelans, left their crisis-hit country to look for better prospects for life.

Trump won the election on Tuesday after a campaign promising massive deportation and a rapid return of deportation to Mexico.

His proposed immigration policy also includes terminating citizenship rights for undocumented immigrant children.

During the previous administration, between 2017 and 2021 Trump implemented a policy that left hundreds of thousands of migrants stranded in camps along Mexico's borders, thus changing US immigration politics.

State security spokeswoman Chiapas told Reuters that as migrants continued to move north, several families chose to return to Tapachula, near the Guatemalan border.

However, for many people, the journey to the north continues.

Venezuelan migrants, Jeilimar, remain hopeful that his appointment for asylum through the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) application, CBP One, will be reached before Trump takes office in January 2025.

"With God's permission, I will get that promise," he said, when he traveled with his six-year-old daughter, intending to reach the United States.

Human rights activists say migrants will continue to flock to the US southern border.

"People will be looking for a new way, this will be more dangerous, but it won't stop them," said Heyman V wayzquez, a Catholic priest and pro-migrant activist in Chiapas.