Outside the migration office, Tito subtly pointed out the watchful human smugglers leaning against a wall.
They had already tried to sell their services to Tito, who was on his way to the US but, like everyone else there, found himself stuck in Tapachula, a town in southern Mexico that has become a global way station.
Tito, who only gave his first name, left Haiti for Chile in 2019, where he set up a company selling wooden pallets and met a Haitian woman, with whom he had a daughter, but the pandemic put him of business. He set out for the US, promising his family he would send money home.
That was two years ago.
“It hurts me to see these people with their children,” said Tito, gesturing to a nearby campsite, where grubby little legs poked out of tent flaps. “I couldn’t bear to have my kid do this with me.”
By the border with Guatemala, Tapachula is where Mexico has strived to contain people heading north, acting as the US’s immigration enforcer. Yet president-elect Donald Trump is now demanding Mexico do more – with the threat of a day-one 25% tax on all imports if it fails.
“This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” Trump blustered last week.
After a phone call with Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, Trump claimed she had “agreed to stop migration through Mexico” and that this was “effectively closing our southern border”.
Sheinbaum clarified that Mexico did not plan to close the border, but assured Trump that Mexico was already “taking care of” migrant caravans, several of which have set out from Tapachula since he won re-election in November – the latest on Monday.
In reality, Mexico has been controlling migrant flows on behalf of the US for years.
Where migrants passing through Central American countries simply receive a document that allows them to pass through the country, in Mexico they face a complex and shifting migration bureaucracy that limits their mobility.
This currently centres on the US CBP-One smartphone app, which people must use to request an appointment that then allows them to cross Mexico, enter the US and request asylum.
People without an appointment who are intercepted by Mexico’s militarised police force, the Guardia Nacional, may be bussed back to Tapachula, while those who make it to the US border are often unable to request asylum.
Mexico’s efforts, which intensified over the last year, helped slash the number of arrivals at the US-Mexico border by 40% from an all-time peak in December 2023.
Though there is no official figure, local human rights organisations estimate there is currently a floating population of perhaps 50,000 migrants in Tapachula, which has a resident population of 350,000.
There are three main shelters, which can hold roughly 1,000 people between them. The rest live in hotels, houses, tents – or in the elements. “The truth is that there is not the capacity to attend to everyone,” said América Pérez, from the Jesuit Refugee Service.
Tito arrived in Mexico 15 months ago and says he has been waiting for a CBP-One appointment on and off ever since. Some 1,450 are issued a day, but the criteria are inscrutable. “Some people come and get an appointment the next day,” said Tito. “I can’t understand it.”
Tired of waiting, he managed to make his way to Monterrey, by the border with Texas. “I thought about going across with a coyote,” said Tito, referring to a human smuggler. “But it’s dangerous.”
Then, a week ago, immigration officials detained him and sent him back to Tapachula. “I’ve made no progress,” he sighed. “I’m just older.”
But people like Tito have become a exploitable source of economic life for the city itself.
For the business sector, this trapped population means cheap labour. Tito periodically earns 250 pesos (roughly £10) for informal 11-hour shifts in construction.
Meanwhile, the service sector overcharges migrants. “I’ve had two Mexican fares in the last week,” said one taxi driver. “It’s thanks to the migrants that we have work.”
In the city centre, hotels are full and travel agencies busy. “You’d almost think this was a tourist destination,” said Raúl Caporal, from Casa Frida, an organisation that supports LGBTQ+ refugees.
The money to be made off migrants has drawn crime and violence to what was once a relatively peaceful part of Mexico.
It is now the rule that people are briefly kidnapped on the short journey between the border and Tapachula, and released in exchange for a fixed fee, before being given a stamp on their wrist to indicate they have paid their way.
In Tapachula itself, people are surrounded by a whirl of false information about the pathways for migration to the US, sometimes put out by scammers or coyotes that then offer their services as an alternative.
The risk of a more prolonged kidnapping, followed by extortion of one’s relatives in the US, is an ever-present. “There are people keeping watch in the public spaces of Tapachula,” said Pérez.
Sometimes relatives post adverts for missing people on Facebook groups, or contact local human rights organisations for help. “But there’s no figure for how many people disappear on the way,” said Caporal.
All of this has launched Tapachula to the top of the list for cities with the greatest perception of insecurity in Mexico.
“You have to be very careful here,” said Tito. “Don’t get involved with anyone, and always get home before dark.”
The growing presence of organised crime, combined with deployment of the military to control migration, created the conditions for a massacre when soldiers fired on a smuggling vehicle just outside Tapachula on 1 October.
According to the military, the soldiers first heard detonations, then responded by opening fire. Of 33 migrants, six were killed and 12 injured. The government is investigating, but human rights groups have expressed concern over their lack of access to the survivors.
“There is a policy of silence to control the narration of the events, so that there is no independent version of what took place,” said Enrique Vidal, of the Fray Matías Human Rights Centre.
The Executive Commission for Victims Assistance in Tapachula, the government agency advising the survivors, did not respond to a request for an interview.
The mounting risks of staying in Tapachula, and the re-election of Trump, have accelerated the rate of migrant caravans setting out, with at least seven, some several thousand strong, leaving in recent weeks. “People are looking for safety in numbers,” said Vidal.
But Trump’s demands that Mexico redouble its efforts as the US’s immigration enforcer could exacerbate the desperation and predation seen in Tapachula, deepening the humanitarian crisis and gifting more money and power to organised crime groups.
“People are afraid that CBP-1 will cease to exist, that there will be more restrictions,” said Pérez. “But then again, they are very clear about their objective. They know they want to get to the US – and they will.”
