President Donald Trump’s promised border crackdown appears to be influencing groups of migrants looking to enter the United States illegally.
Internal Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) memos obtained by Fox News indicate that two groups of migrants recently ended their journeys to the U.S. and turned around to return to their home countries.
On Wednesday, Feb. 5, Honduran officers encountered a group of 23 migrants previously headed for the United States. The individuals hailed from Honduras, Venezuela, Panama and El Salvador.
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According to the CBP memo, upon interviewing the migrants, officials learned that they had entered Mexico through the country’s border with Guatemala. However, they decided to turn around after “learning about the multi-agency force security on the Southwest Border in social media and through family members in the United States.”
In its memo, CBP also noted that the migrants surrendered to Mexican authorities before being sent back to Guatemala where they boarded buses headed to Honduras.
CBP detailed a Feb. 3 incident in another internal memo obtained by Fox News in which the Honduran authorities encountered a group of 26 migrants. These migrants were also headed for the U.S., but turned around when they learned about the increased security and opted instead to return to their countries of origin.
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The migrants in this group were apparently from Venezuela and Cuba. They were initially turned away by Nicaraguan immigration officials and sent back to Honduras, but after a discussion between the two nations, they were allowed to cross into Nicaragua as they made their way back home.
President Donald Trump focused much of his 2024 campaign on illegal immigration, vowing to take a completely different approach from former President Joe Biden. While campaigning for his second term, Trump often appeared with families who lost loved ones to illegal immigrant crime or fentanyl.
Following November’s election, there were reports of illegal immigrants leaving the U.S. or choosing to “self-deport” prior to Trump’s return to D.C. out of fears of his potential policies.
The first piece of legislation that President Trump signed in his second term was the Laken Riley Act, named for a nursing student who was killed during a jog on the University of Georgia’s campus by an illegal immigrant. Jose Ibarra, who previously had been arrested but never detained by ICE, received a life prison sentence for killing 22-year-old Laken Riley.
President Trump is also taking a novel approach to detaining illegal immigrants. Under President Trump’s order on “Expanding Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to Full Capacity,” illegal immigrants will be housed with the 15 last detainees remaining in the infamous facility.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who joined an immigration raid last month in New York City, confirmed that a second flight of illegal immigrants left for Gitmo ahead of her visit.
Noem previously said that only “the worst of the worst” of illegal immigrants would be sent to the facility in Cuba, which could eventually be home to up to 30,000 migrants.
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