(NewsNation) — With President-elect Donald Trump getting inaugurated next month, advocates say migrants are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
On one hand, they’re scared to stay in Mexico because of the threat from the cartels. On the other, many are fearful of what’s to come with the Trump administration and his promised mass deportations. Trump has also said he’s going to remove several immigration policies enacted under President Joe Biden.
Nidia Montenegro, a 52-year-old Venezuelan migrant currently in Mexico, told Reuters she may return home, as she’s more scared of the violence she has encountered while traveling through Mexico than the hardship she left behind in Venezuela.
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“I am traumatized. If I don’t get the appointment (with border officials) I will go back,” she told Reuters.
A dozen migrants interviewed in Mexico by Reuters said they would prefer to return to their countries despite the ongoing issues that drove them to migrate. However, others said to Reuters that they will persist in trying to get to the United States, whether joining caravans, paying a human trafficker, or clinging to the hopes of a U.S. government border appointment.
Although coming to the United States is an “arduous, tenous, dangerous journey,” Thomas Kennedy of the Florida Immigration Coalition says people make it because in their home countries, there’s no upward mobility, and they may even face repression or violence that threatens “their very existence.”
“People are willing to take those risks in search of a better life,” Kennedy said in an interview with NewsNation.
Reuters contributed to this story.
