The La Soledad migrant camp has a feeling of despair, named after the church from the colonial era, which gropes through the shantytown in downtown Mexico City.
It should be a temporary stopover, a place where you could group up and wait for the right moment to continue to the United States.
Subsequently, President Trump published decrees that effectively stopped migration along the border between the USA and Mexico and left tens of thousands of migrants in camps, accommodations and other accommodations throughout Mexico, from southern hinterland to Rio Grande.
Desperate and bankrupt – many sold houses, borrowed cash, paid smugglers and left children behind to pursue the American dream – they are now facing an existential settlement: what next?
“At the moment there is great uncertainty,” said Manuela Pérez Jerónimo, a 47-year-old from Guatemala who roasted potatoes for charcoal. “Nobody knows anything. Will we be able to cross the border? Are we all deported? “
The Times spoke to some of the approximately 1,500 residents of La Soledad when they weighed their three main options: turn back, wait and see or push.
Give the dream
There is no census, and migrants come and go, but the majority of people in La Soledad seem to come from Venezuela, the once rich South American nation, which has experienced an exodus of more than 7 million in the middle of an economic, social and political crackup.
Jormaris Figuera Fernández, 42, and her husband, Jesus Manuel Marquez Murillo, 31, both from Venezuela, in her shanty in La Soledad Migrant Camp in downtown Mexico city.
(Cecilia sánchez vidal / for the time)
“It became impossible to make a living,” said Jormaris Figuera Fernández, 42, and spoke in front of a hut of plywood boards and a Tarpaulin -Baldachin, whom she shared with her husband.
The two left Venezuela six years ago when they first connected legions of fellow citizens in neighboring Colombia, where the couple worked in construction work, in the coffee fields and other jobs. Later they tried their luck in Brazil and Chile before returning to Colombia.
Then in 2023 they set off to the United States, a dangerous journey that began in the Darién Gap, the unforgettable rainforest strip between Colombia and Panama.
“We have heard that many people crossed the jungle – even some with crutches, very overweight people, pregnant women,” said Figuera. “We thought we could do it too.”
It took six weeks to reach Mexico. Figuera cleaned houses in the southern state of Chiapas for more than a year while her husband worked in the fields.
The two finally made their way to Mexico city and paid about $ 200 for their Shanty in La Soledad. It has a bed, a couch, a table, a table and a hot plate that, like other devices, runs in the warehouse of pirated copies of pirated copies. Every time it costs about 25 cents if you use the toilet in a nearby bar.
After the election of Trump in November, hundreds fled from La Soledad and provided the border with the idea of crossing the US territory before taking office.
But Figuera and her husband remained hopeful to get a legal admission – in contrast to her son, who, as she said, illegally crossed the border twice, spent four months in US care and was now waiting in New York and was waiting for a deportation hearing .
“He said it was very difficult, very cold and extremely difficult to find work without papers,” said Figuera.
In view of Trump's castle, the couple thought: they plan to return to Colombia has found a way to get there.
“We came here with a dream with a purpose to get to the United States to help our families,” said Figuera and tears in their eyes. “We don't go back now. Pressed. Emptied. We failed. “
Wait and see
The two boys at the age of 2 and 4 at the age of 4 let the labyrinth of La Soledad be delivered under lines of the drying laundry and past, the stacked hand carts and carpenters displace to kill structures.
Venezuelan Alexandra Roa, 21, and her husband Luis Abraham Rodriguez, 26, plan to stay in Mexico for the time being to with her children Matias, 4 and Mateo, 2.
(Cecilia sánchez vidal / for the time)
“It is not a great place for children,” said her mother Alexandra Roa, 21, in front of the family and plastic apartment of the family.
You have been in Mexico for seven months.
“We are disillusioned, desperate,” said Roa, who left Venezuela at the age of 16 and settled in Chile for several years before going to the USA. “I try to distract myself. But sometimes I start crying and crying. “
Their anxiety is reports on mass shifts, separation of families and military operations along the US border.
“We don't want to take the risk of going to the border, and then something really bad happens,” said Roa.
You and her husband have decided to wait and see what happens for at least a few months. He found the work in the city center of heavy goods and inserted about $ 10 to $ 15 a day.
She said she prays that some spectral strength or unlikely margin of conscience “touch” Trump's heart.
Her two children wandered back. It was the lunch break in La Soledad, the air that was interrupted with the rhythm of cumbia and salsa that turned into boom boxes.
Push on
“It was like someone had taken a zeal and thrown it on my head,” said Dixon Camacho.
He remembered January 20, the day of inauguration when Word filtered back to La Soledad that Trump had taken the cell phone application known as CBP One, who used more than 900,000 migrants to make appointments with US border guards and legal to get to the United States.
After months of waiting, Camacho had made an estimated date in El Paso on February 4. Now he has been canceled.
Dixon Camacho, 50, A La Soledad, also from Venezuela, plans to continue to the border and enter the United States, but he can.
(Cecilia Sánchez Vidal / for the times)
“I was left without words, with fear, anger, frustration,” said Camacho, 50, who leaned on a couch in a kind of open-air living room in La Soledad. “I asked myself: 'What now? Where do I go? What do I do? '”
As a widower, he is the father of six children – adult sons and daughters in Ecuador, Brazil and Argentina as well as two teenagers who stay in Venezuela.
He was a transport distributor in Venezuela, earned enough to take care of his family comfortably – and even made a wasteful vacation in Brazil.
“Now we are Venezuelans the poor,” said Camacho, who, in honor of Michael Jordan, was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and jacket – although his jacket No. 22, not Jordan's famous 23.
He left Venezuela in January 2024 to join a brother in Texas.
On two occasions, Camacho jumped freight trains to the Mexican border state of Chihuahua and put him on the edge of getting into the United States – only to be imprisoned by Mexican immigration agents who drove back to South -Mexico.
Camacho in Mexico is not an option, although the Trump government plans to send asylum seekers who return to Mexico on the border to assess the US cases.
Stranded migrants in Mexico city express concern and fear of mass deportation in the Trump era.
(Gerardo Vieyra / Nurphoto / Getty Images)
“In Mexico you basically earn enough to live,” said Camacho. “I couldn't send a single peso Back to my children, my mother. “
He plans to hit the rails again north, even if it means to illegally cross the border. He said he and his friends of La Soledad had shown a route.
“We are all like a family here,” said Camacho. “I'm ready to go now.”
Soon, he said, they would not be on the way, not from walls, barbed wire, troops and presidential regulations.
Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.