Mexico is racing to provide extra shelter capacity for tens of thousands of people in cities along the US border, one of which declared a state of emergency ahead of Donald Trump’s plan to remove record numbers of migrants.
People briefed on the plans said at least 60,000 additional shelter places were being prepared after the US president-elect pledged the largest mass deportations in the country’s history, focusing on people in the US illegally and with criminal records.
About half the estimated 11mn unauthorised migrants in the US are Mexican. Some 662,000 non-citizens in the US have been convicted or face pending criminal charges, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
This week the city of Tijuana declared a state of emergency because of the expected arrivals, while in nearby Mexicali the mayor said the city would convert a conference centre to receive people.
Two people with knowledge of the plans said the federal government provisionally hoped to open 25 shelters, each with capacity for 2,500 people, to receive deported Mexicans, but was keeping the plan quiet and flexible as numbers remain uncertain.
The government declined to comment and referred the FT to President Claudia Sheinbaum’s public messages on the matter.
Trump, whose inauguration is on Monday, has threatened Mexico with tariffs of 25 per cent on all exports to the US if it does not do more to prevent migrants and drugs from crossing the border. He has legal options for expelling people, including executive orders and public health restrictions.
Sheinbaum has broadly taken a tougher public response to Trump than some other world leaders, hinting at retaliatory tariffs.
The leftwing leader has said her team had a plan for responding to the deportations but would not present the details prematurely. The government will have to deal with the influx while implementing double digit-budget cuts for the foreign ministry and National Migration Institute.
A planned “panic button” app for migrants to alert their nearest consulate if they believe they are about to be detained for deportation has yet to be launched because of technical difficulties. Extra lawyers will be present at Mexico’s 53 consulates in the US.
The government even released a new nationalist hymn for migrants.
“We’ve been working for months, since President Trump announced it, on receiving our citizens in the best way,” Sheinbaum said this week. “Of course, we don’t agree [with the deportations].”
Trump’s tough stance on the border was one driver of his November election victory, after crossings to the US reached record levels during Joe Biden’s presidency. But a crackdown by Mexico at Washington’s behest, along with expanded legal pathways, has reduced irregular crossings in the past year.
The US has carried out deportations for much of its history, with a record number removed in the fiscal year 2012 under President Barack Obama, when ICE deported more than 409,000 people. In fiscal year 2024, Biden removed more than 271,000 people, according to US government data.
However, both the scale and profile of migrants to be deported could now change significantly.
During Trump’s first term, Mexico took back migrants from around the world, initially those waiting on asylum claims and later those pushed back across the border during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Sheinbaum suggested this month she would be open to accepting other nationalities, but it was not clear whether Mexico would take back citizens deported from the US interior as well as those near the border.
Returning migrants to their home countries presents additional legal and practical difficulties for the US where those countries are repressive regimes or lack a friendly relationship with Washington.
“If a Venezuelan or Nicaraguan is arrested in Chicago after living five years in the US, and it’s impossible to fly them to Caracas or Managua, will the administration expect Mexico to take them too?” said Adam Isacson, director of defence oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America.
Numbers may not spike immediately, as Trump faces challenges including a lack of detention space, flights and co-operation from some police forces.
Chad Wolf, Trump’s former acting secretary of homeland security, suggested an initial aim could be exceeding Obama-era levels of deportations.
“My guess is if they can beat that in the first year, then that’s a win,” he told the FT. “They’re going to have to scale it to a place where it hasn’t been scaled before . . . all that’s going to take time.”
The programme’s economic and social ramifications could be significant for both sides. US industries such as construction and agriculture rely on undocumented labour, while remittances to Mexico were worth $63bn in 2023 — more than foreign investment or tourism.
People working with migrants in Mexico said thousands of people would be vulnerable to recruitment by gangs if they were dumped in northern cities rampant with organised crime.
Historically Mexico has lacked infrastructure to reintegrate returned citizens, according to Maggie Loredo, an activist working with deported migrants in Mexico.
“There’s really nothing for folks that have been incarcerated,” she said. “Those people are also in more vulnerable conditions.”
Andrew Selee, Director of the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute, said the additional deportations would require shelters, transport, identity documents, job fairs and mental health resources.
“The Mexican government [does] . . . need to be ready over the next six months,” he said, adding that it needed “to find ways of integrating migrants from other countries who will be stuck in Mexico”.
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