Diogenes
Nemo me impune lacessit
This town was built on migrants’ cash. Now it fears Trump’s deportations.
President-elect Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan could upend life in Mexican villages that depend on remittances from relatives in the United States.
Over the past 30 years, this corn-growing hamlet in central Mexico emptied out. Around half the 3,000 residents moved to the United States. As the migrants went north, the dollars flowed south.
Now, a current of fear is running through a village tethered to Illinois, California and Oregon by the flow of remittances.
President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to carry out “the largest deportation operation in American history” — taking aim at more than 11 million people living illegally in the United States. Nearly half are Mexican.
Trump built his campaign on restricting immigration, arguing that the border was out of control. Many Americans agreed. After all, illegal crossings shot to record levels under President Joe Biden, averaging 2 million a year in his first three years in office, before falling dramatically. Even big cities felt overwhelmed.
Mexicans are nervously awaiting a U.S. operation that could upend all that. Mexico’s government is setting up 25 large shelters on the border to receive deportees.
It’s even launching a phone app with an “alert button” that migrants can press — alerting the nearest Mexican consulate — when they’re swept up in the deportations.
“We all talk about it,” said Elizabeth Villafuerte, 51, who runs a fruit stand in the town square of Francisco Villa, set amid the rolling farmlands of Michoacán state.
As she sprinkled chili powder into plastic cups filled with watermelon, cantaloupe and jicama, Villafuerte commiserated with her cousin, Laura Alegria, about their relatives living illegally in Oregon.
Alegria’s sister and brother haven’t been home in more than 30 years. Still, they’ve sent cash regularly to the single mother of four. It’s paid for everything from the cinder-block walls of her house to their elderly father’s leg amputation.
On a national level, the pipeline of migrant money has become a gusher. Mexico took in about $63 billion in remittances in 2023, more than from tourism or oil exports. The country has overtaken China to become the world’s No. 2 recipient of remittances.
“If we can’t turn to them,” she said, “life here can be very cruel.”