Donald Trump is victorious at the southern border

IN 1971 THE barrier that separated San Diego from Tijuana was a bit of chicken wire. Even that was too much for Pat Nixon, who was First Lady at the time. When she visited the beach at the very south-western edge of California she decided she wanted to meet the Mexicans queuing to greet her. So she asked the mayor of Tijuana to tear down the fence. “I do hope that this will be a common beach,” she said. “Because we’re such good friends with Mexico, I don’t think we need a border.”

That spot eventually became known as Friendship Park. Families that could not reunite legally in either country would meet at the fence. John Fanestil, a Methodist pastor living on the California side, visited every Sunday. “You could buy a taco through the wall,” he recalls. In 2011 he started regularly holding “border church”. Parishioners shared tortillas and grape juice. But, little by little, access to the park was restricted. The wall became two walls, and they grew taller. Visiting hours diminished. Today the two halves of Friendship Park are a study in contrasts. The Mexican side is buzzing. Vibrant murals adorn the wall and vendors sell churros to beachgoers. The American side is empty; it is a militarised zone. Mr Fanestil used to trespass occasionally to protest against the separation. “I don’t anticipate doing that,” he says, with Donald Trump in office.

Few others are trying to cross either. “Encounters” of migrants by Border Patrol agents at the frontier began to fall during the final year of Joe Biden’s presidency. After Mr Trump took office they plummeted to the lowest level in decades (see chart 1). In Tijuana aid workers say migrant shelters, once overflowing, are mostly empty aside from Mexicans fleeing violence in their hometowns. This does not seem like a short lull. Almost no one is travelling north through the Darién Gap, a jungle on the Colombia-Panama border that became a thoroughfare for migrants from all over the world intending to claim asylum in America (see chart 2). A small reverse migration has even begun. At least 15,000 people, mostly Venezuelans, have returned to South America since January.

Mr Trump is claiming victory on the issue that launched his political career a decade ago. “On our southern border, we have successfully repelled a colossal invasion,” he told the UN last month. Many border wonks are sceptical of the effectiveness of enforcement alone. They contend that the US-Mexico frontier is so long (1,950 miles or 3,145km) and the coyotes (people-smugglers) so wily, that people will always find new ways to cross. That argument has held up—until now.

The Trump administration has thrown the entire might of the federal government behind stopping illegal immigration. Their approach “is layered, like an onion”, says Adam Isacson, of the Washington Office on Latin America, a think-tank. Soldiers, harsher penalties for border-crossers, the performative cruelty of deportations without trial to prison in El Salvador and a ban on asylum reinforce each other. The UN’s migration body interviewed migrants in Mexico who had set out for America and then changed their minds. Most cited border restrictions, policy changes and fears of deportation as their reasons for not crossing. The administration’s approach can be summarised by a message it posted to an official WhatsApp channel: “Ni lo intentes” (Don’t even try it).

First, consider the military might deployed to deter the alleged invasion. It is not unusual for presidents of either party to send troops to help Border Patrol with logistics or surveillance. This administration has gone further. The president directed the Department of War (as it is newly known) to annex some border land and attach those parcels to nearby (and sometimes not so nearby) military bases. The Posse Comitatus Act prevents soldiers from arresting people, a duty reserved for cops. But the idea is that if a migrant crosses the border and walks onto these annexed pieces of land, soldiers can detain them for trespassing on military property.

This is not the only military deterrent. Stryker armoured vehicles and anti-submarine surveillance planes are now features of the borderlands. The One Big Beautiful Bill, passed in July, includes nearly $47bn to keep building the wall and equip it with cameras and sensors. Mike Banks, the chief of Border Patrol, suggests that the military presence won’t be permanent. “We will get back to a point where we will control the border without the assistance of all of this support,” he said recently. But a full withdrawal seems unlikely.

Second, the administration is getting tougher on those who still dare to cross. Encounters at the border have dwindled, but federal prosecutors are charging ever more migrants with illegal entry (see chart 3). There is some evidence that the threat of criminal charges reduced the likelihood that migrants would try to cross the border multiple times during the Obama administration. Back then, Border Patrol called it “consequence delivery”.

The third tenet of Mr Trump’s layered border strategy veers from delivering consequences into demonstrations of cruelty. In this administration the routine process of deporting someone—a normal part of immigration enforcement under anay government—has changed. Masked agents grab people from street corners, detain them (often in squalid conditions), and sometimes remove them to a country they have never set foot in. Migrants in Baja California tell aid workers they are scared of being jailed indefinitely in America or sent to a Salvadoran prison. Why risk your life to cross the border just to live in fear?

Underpinning the whole border strategy is Mr Trump’s asylum ban. Migrants might dodge soldiers and risk prosecution if it meant that they could secure a hearing date and a work permit. That pathway no longer exists. In an executive order signed on his first day in office, Mr Trump alleged that the “invasion” of America by migrants allowed him to ban asylum. In the order he admits that most presidents have used the statutory authority he is claiming to bar small groups of people from entering the country, but argues that his power extends to restricting access to entire parts of the country’s immigration system.

This is being challenged in the courts. A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Washington recently ruled that the administration cannot deport people to a country where they would face torture, but allowed the asylum ban to remain in place while the case is being litigated. The judges cited Trump v Hawaii, a 2018 case that upheld a ban on travel to America from a list of countries, as precedent for judicial deference to the president where immigration policy and national security are intertwined. “The courts certainly seem inclined to find compromise outcomes where they don’t have to completely declare unlawful Trump actions,” says Denise Gilman, an expert on refugee law at the University of Texas at Austin.

Other factors are in play, too. Mexico also got tough on migrants in order to stay on America’s good side. Migrants within Mexico began travelling less to avoid being detained and sent to southern cities near Guatemala. Just getting to Tijuana these days is a feat.

Will it last? “If the courts were to strike down the asylum ban, I think it’s very possible you would see lots more people coming,” says Andrew Selee of the Migration Policy Institute. In the meantime migrants in Mexico are hunkering down and leaving shelters to rent a room. But the allure of America is strong. Many Haitians who put down roots in Mexicali, on the border, left for America when Mr Biden opened a pathway for them in 2023. Migrants may not be able to beat Mr Trump right now, but they can try to wait him out. ■