A restless crowd of people under a burning morning sun pressed an immigration officer in a remote corner of Mexico, every person begs to go on a flight.
They did not try to come to the United States because many of them had hoped not long ago. Now they tried to return to Venezuela – or just escape from this city – as long as they had the passports, the paperwork or the means to leave.
At least 3000 Venezuelans were stranded in Tapachula, a sizzling city near the southernmost point of Mexico that was ever an gateway for migrants who entered Guatemala. Not long ago, thousands wicked through the streets, overflowing hiding places and sleeping in courtyards, parks and squares.
But the city has still grown. Shelters are empty. Parks where families were busy are abandoned.
Now the movement is reversed. One by one, people go buses, withdraw their steps on foot or drive back over the river of the such river – back to Guatemala and to their native country.
They are part of a growing wave of inverted migration: people who, in the light of President Trump’s hard policy, have made the painful choice to return to the countries they have ever fled by violence, poverty and climate change-Ealhans for the time being leave their dreams of a better life.
The thousands who stay in Tapachula miss the paperwork or the means to do something other than wait. The immigration restrictions of Mexico, adopted under pressure from the Biden and Trump administrations, forbid them to even leave the city, and they cannot easily go back to Venezuela.
“We are stuck here,” said Patricia Marval, 23, a Venezuelan who is eight months pregnant and is struggling to take care of three children in a cabin of a room with one room, Cinder-Block.
Every day her partner tries to scrape a few pesos together in the store of a carpenter network enough for rice and tortillas, but never enough for diapers for their 1-year-old Siena. Some nights hunger at them in their sleep, she said.
The despair is so crushing that Mrs. Marval said she even considered asking a neighbor to take one of the children, so that they could eat at least three times a day. “If I could leave one of them, I would,” she said sobbing. “But I just can’t.”
There are approximately 8,000 to 10,000 migrants in similar sea rings spread throughout the southern state of Chiapas, according to Eduardo Castillejos, under the secretary of a state government agency that handles migrant cases along the southern border. Most come from Venezuela, Cuba and Haiti, and were planning to reach the United States.
But it is Venezuelans, he said, who are most desperate to leave – and who are confronted with the steepest obstacles. Without resources and no travel documents, “these people simply no longer have any alternatives,” said Mr. Castillejos. “They are confronted with a very dark situation.”
He said that more resources were needed to hire and integrate migrants, not only in Chiapas, but throughout the country. “Mexico is no longer just a transit country – we will be a destination,” he said. “We have to adapt to that reality.”
The Mexican government, who tries to prevent the hard rates threatened by Mr Trump, has intensified the efforts in recent months to go on the flow of migrants to the American border.
The migrants in Tapachula are not allowed to leave the city or the state without a special migrant permit granted after applying for asylum, a process that can take months. Those who try to leave without the right documents often find immigration control points opposite buses and highways, where officials hold travelers routinely without the required papers, according to interviews with dozens of migrants and proponents of rights.
Those who want to leave the country are also confronted with obstacles, with many without valid passports, transit permits or identity documents. Those without means to make the long journey must wait to be selected for a humanitarian flight delivered by Mexico – and for the Venezuelan government to approve their return.
There are currently thousands of people on the waiting list for a flight to Venezuela, according to an officer who spoke with migrants, but refused to give her name because she was not allowed to talk to journalists.
“This is as if you are in prison because we can’t go anywhere,” said Mari Angeli Useche, 24, who left Venezuela eight months ago, hoping to reach the United States, and now hopes that she can come to Venezuela on a humanitarian flight before giving birth. She is due to about three months.
For some, especially those who have traveled for years, the wait is unbearable.
Keila Mendoza, 34, fled Venezuela eight years ago, on the way to Colombia and hoped to reach the United States. Along the way she met her partner and gave birth to her children, now 7 and 3.
They arrived in Tapachula six months ago and their nightmare started. Criminals kidnapped Mrs. Mendoza for seven days, she said, and demanded ransom and stealed the little money that the family had scraped together. Shortly thereafter, her partner left them.
Mrs. Mendoza now works in a local supermarket, tries to cover food and rent – although there is often not enough for it. “Sometimes I don’t earn money and I can’t feed my sons,” she said.
The only documents she has are the identification papers of her boys, which proves their Colombian citizenship. Desperate how she is, the idea of returning to the country she escaped years ago, fulfills her with fear.
“I want to go home, but nothing is waiting for me,” she said. “How do you start a life again from nothing?”
Even those documents are more than many migrants. Among the people stranded in Tapachula are women who have raised families during the long journey from Venezuela. Some gave birth in places such as Peru and Colombia, who take children who now have different nationalities – but no official papers to prove who they are. Without even birth certificates or passports, their uncertain futures are even more in balance.
“I am desperate to go, but I can’t do it, I don’t know what to do,” said Mrs. Marval, The three children has: Alan, 7, who was born in Venezuela; Ailan, 4, born in Colombia; And Siena, 1, who was born in Peru.
Targeted by a feeling of hopelessness, she said she had sometimes considered ending her own life. But the thought of putting her children deeper pain, has prevented her from doing something, she said.
Many of the mothers think that their only remaining choices are impossible. Marielis Luque, who left Venezuela with her two daughters eight months ago, traveled through seven countries before their progress was stopped in Mexico.
She was kidnapped in Tapachula and made to pay $ 100 for her freedom, she said, an almost unreachable amount for many in the city.
“I am sorry that I once came here and put my two daughters through this,” she said with tears in her eyes. “But staying in Venezuela would also have made me a bad mother.”
Those who can return to the south are increasingly choosing this.
Near the city center of the city, a group of about 30 Venezuelans waited quietly on a bus on the way to Guatemala – the first stage of their long journey home. Some themselves were defined from the United States, others never achieved that limit. But they had two things in common: a desire to return and just enough money to make the journey possible.
“I’d rather be hungry in my country than in a foreign country,” said Deisy Morales, 33, just before she climbed the bus. “I’m going home!”
Mariana Morales and Marian Carrasquero contributed reporting.
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