As the panic worsened, two men tied the ladders together with rope and placed them over the steel border wall separating Tijuana from Southern California.
“Hurry, hurry, keep moving!” – shouted the smugglers at the bottom of the stairs. A young Zimbabwean girl stood at the top and looked down with wide eyes, hesitating before taking her next step.
On Monday, people waiting to enter the United States learned that President Trump canceled all asylum appointments moments after taking office and intends to sign several executive orders closing the border.
However, at least one group is still making a desperate and risky last-minute effort to cross into the United States.
One by one, they climbed the wobbly structure, then slid down the other side. Those who succeeded helped capture women and children. But one of the women fell to the ground on her way down and lay down, sobbing in pain, and grabbed her leg.
“We do it out of need, not because we want to, and that’s all there is to it,” said Carlos Porras, 39, of Peru, speaking through the wall panels. He also injured his ankle while jumping and was limping.
Moments later, US Border Patrol officers approached the group and took them away.
The scene revealed the desperation of migrants who learned on Monday that the border was now effectively closed. Everyone was left to process their feelings, from confusion to despair.
“I feel angry, I feel sad, I feel everything,” Katherine Romero, 36, a Venezuelan who has waited a year in Mexico City for her asylum appointment, said Monday, working various jobs to save for a plane ticket to Tijuana. “I just can’t believe it.”
In a series of orders he signed Monday evening, Trump moved to close the country’s borders to migrants, part of a barrage of policies that included broadly barring asylum seekers and declaring a national emergency to deploy the military at the border.
His administration shut down the CBP One app just minutes after Mr. Trump took the presidential oath on Monday. The app was used by the Biden administration to allow migrants to make appointments to enter the United States, but it has been a target of Republicans.
The program allowed 1,450 people per day to make an appointment to present themselves at a port of entry and seek asylum. More than 900,000 people have entered the country using the application since its launch until the end of 2024.
At a migrant camp in Mexico City on Monday, Cristian Murillo Romero, a Venezuelan who arrived in Mexico more than a year ago, learned that Mr. Trump had ended the CBP One program — but he did not know what that would mean for his presidency in January. 26 dates in Calexico, CA.
Then he opened his email. There was a message in English titled “1 CBP Appointment Canceled” stating that current appointments were “no longer valid.”
“I want to cry,” Mr. Murilo Romero, 37, said. When I finally hit him later in the day, he did it.
In Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, only one group of 100 people was allowed to cross into the United States for their early morning appointments. Then, just before 11 a.m., Mexican border officials said they received notification from their American counterparts: No more appointments would be accepted.
“I am in shock,” said John Flores Bonalt, 36, a Venezuelan who did not arrive for his 1 p.m. appointment. “This is unfair. We have been waiting to cross legally for a long time. It has been seven months in Mexico waiting for this appointment.
Jose Antonio Zucchetti, 40, said he left Honduras in September and waited five months in Mexico City before coming to Ciudad Juarez over the weekend “with a lot of hope.” Then his appointment on Monday was cancelled.
“I don’t have a place to stay,” he said, his voice cracking. “I have no family or acquaintances here. I’m on the street.”
On social media, migrants shared photos and videos of themselves crying or with their heads in their hands, as well as detailed captions. how long They have been waiting for appointments. Many said they were They spend their time in Mexico. Some said they waited More than a year.
Several videos were shown The same snippet of a song Which was kind of an anthem for people who Finally I did it To the United States.
Now many were jostling. In Tijuana, some people thought about staying put while praying for some kind of miracle. Others said they are considering going to places like Mexico City, where there are more job opportunities. Some said returning to their home countries was out of the question because they had fled violence or threats.
“Returning to Haiti means returning to death,” said Rose Joseph, 28, who left the country’s violence-torn capital more than two years ago.
In her press conference on Monday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum strongly urged Trump’s team to replace the CBP One app with another mechanism so that people can once again apply for asylum in an orderly manner.
“We want to create something similar, because it has had results,” she said.
The program was a key part of the Biden administration’s efforts to control migration across the southern border. U.S. officials at the time believed that by offering immigrants a structured way to enter legally through an app, they could discourage unauthorized crossings.
Combined with tighter restrictions in Mexico, illegal crossings declined significantly in 2024, and officials and analysts say enforcement was an important reason.
“That was a huge change,” said Ariel Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington. “It provided more stability and the opportunity to better control both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, because it made the path of migrants more predictable.”
However, critics viewed the program as a way to allow those who had no legal path to the United States to come and stay for years while their immigration cases languished in the courts.
“They made a request to facilitate illegal immigration,” said Vice President J.D. Vance He said In a post on X last week. “It boggles the mind.”
Without an alternative program, migrants stranded in Mexico are likely to face three scenarios: attempting to illegally cross into the United States, returning to their home countries, or applying for asylum in Mexico.
“This may not be what many immigrants want, but it is an alternative,” Mr. Ruiz Soto said. He added that this would not be of much benefit to Mexicans seeking to flee their country. “For them, I don’t see a lot of options.”
Francisco Gonzalez, a priest who oversees a network of migrant shelters, including one in Ciudad Juarez, said he expects migrants will stay longer in shelters as they plan their next steps. He added that he was concerned that people might now take more risks by hiring smugglers or members of organized crime to cross the border illegally.
“They will keep trying,” he said.
Allen Corpus Reporting from Tijuana and Emiliano Rodriguez Mega and Annie Curial From Mexico City.