(TAPACHULA, MEXICO) Tapachula, the southern Mexican city that for years funneled people north toward the United States, is now the end of the line. Thousands of migrants stuck in limbo are turning back, part of a reverse migration that is reshaping the region’s routes and hopes in the wake of hardened enforcement in both the United States and Mexico. Many are choosing to return to their countries, while others are being pushed south by deportation flights that no longer drop people near the U.S. border but instead in Mexico’s far south, often right back to Tapachula.
The shift has been swift and stark. United Nations figures show only 2,831 people crossed the Darién Gap between January and March 2025, a 98% decrease compared to 2024, signaling the collapse of northbound movement and the rise of southbound flows. Locals in Paso Canoas, on the Costa Rica–Panama border, estimate that more than 100 southbound migrants pass through each day, most of them Venezuelans who gave up after months stalled in Mexico following the 2024 U.S. election. In Tapachula, the reality is visible on the streets, at bus stations, and in shelters where plans are no longer about getting to the United States, but how to get home without facing the jungle again.
“Solo pienso en llegar, llegar, llegar (I’m just thinking of arriving, arriving, arriving),” said Edinson, a Venezuelan father, as he prepared to head back after six months waiting in Mexico.
He and other Venezuelans in Tapachula spoke of weeks spent hustling for the cost of return—selling snacks on sidewalks, hauling bricks on construction sites, or packing mangoes in sweltering sheds—while searching for routes that could avoid the Darién’s deadly trails. Some, like 39-year-old Venezuelan Barajas Marquez, were still trying to save enough to return with their families. Others whispered about walking the jungle back on foot, a sign of how narrow their options have become despite the dangers they know too well.
The reversal has been driven in large part by policy. The return of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency in January 2025 brought what migrants and advocates describe as an effective sealing of the southern border, the dismantling of pathways to asylum, and more pressure on Mexico to stop people far from the Rio Grande. In Mexico, President Claudia Sheinbaum expanded cooperation with U.S. officials. The result, according to government tallies, has been a 93.3% drop in migrant encounters at the U.S. border from February to July 2025 compared to the same months in 2024. The statistics align with what people see daily in Tapachula: bus loads heading south, phone calls back to families with news of defeat, and faces that carry the strain of decisions no one wanted to make.
Those decisions are often made for them. In 2025, the United States carried out 238 removal flights to Mexico, and about 87% landed in southern cities like Tapachula rather than near the northern border. Deposited hundreds of miles from the United States and with few legal options to try again, deportees commonly turn around. The southbound movement is reinforced by Mexican enforcement within the country, which has bused people away from northern crossing points and flown them out of border cities like Ciudad Juárez. For many, those flights end in Tapachula, where they must quickly decide whether to dig in or to leave.
For 29-year-old Venezuelan mother Yudelis Ferreira, the decision felt like a forced rerun of her entire journey.
“We are stuck,” she said, recalling two years migrating north from Maracaibo with her three children and partner.
They had reached Ciudad Juárez, but Mexican officials flew them back to Tapachula, and from there they made their way to Mexico City, where her family tried to regroup. “Since Trump returned there are many people trapped in the city,” said Emanuel Herrera, director of the Vasco De Quiroga shelter in Mexico City, describing how people who once had appointments or a plan now linger without a path.
In Mexico City, as many as 5,000 migrants are living in a patchwork of 16 shelters and private lodgings, according to shelter operators. Dormitories are divided by gender and family status. Families share communal bathrooms and kitchens. Children play soccer in courtyards and draw chalk lines on the ground; in the evenings, men and women trade tips on cheap bus tickets and places offering day labor. Selling candy, cleaning, or doing odd jobs can make the difference between a bus ride to the Guatemalan border and another week waiting for money that may not come.
“Almost all of them have seen someone die or disappear … and now they have to return,” said Ivan Aguilar of Oxfam, describing a psychological toll layered atop debt, hunger, and fear.
The long journey north often drained savings and pushed families into borrowing from relatives or loan sharks. The return journey, sudden and unplanned, demands more cash they don’t have. “When the border with the United States closed, everyone’s dreams stopped existing,” Aguilar said. The collapse, he added, is personal: a loss not just of a destination, but of a future imagined through years of hardship.
“They had a light at the end of a tunnel. But now that light has been extinguished,” Herrera said.
Shelter directors in Mexico City speak of rising depression among people forced to consider heading back through countries where they were robbed or assaulted on the way up. Caitlyn Yates, an anthropologist who studies regional migration, noted that “grappling with the end of hope is the most difficult part” for families who believed the risks of the Darién Gap—violent gangs, river crossings, and days without food—would be offset by a chance at safety or stable work in the United States.
The numbers track with the anecdotes. Where the Darién once saw tens of thousands each month and Tapachula brimmed with northbound buses, today Paso Canoas residents count steady streams going the other way. In Tapachula, money changers openly exchange Mexican pesos for U.S. dollars or Colombian pesos as people plan routes through Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica on their way south. Bus counters have taped hand-lettered signs advertising tickets to border points. The city’s squares, once dotted with cardboard signs offering rides to the north, now carry hastily written lists of southbound options and prices.
For families like Edinson’s, the question is how to get home without repeating the worst. Many Venezuelans in Tapachula swap rumors about lesser-known crossings or sea routes that could avoid the Darién Gap, a dense jungle between Colombia and Panama that became a main artery of migration in recent years. People pool money to send a single relative ahead to scout options. Others accept that walking back through the jungle might still be the only route they can afford, despite the dangers they barely survived heading north. The calculation is stark: risk the jungle again, or sit in a Mexican shelter with no work and no legal path forward.
Mexican authorities have not announced a public plan for the growing southbound flow through Tapachula, a city already strained by years of hosting people in transit. Shelter operators say capacity swings by the day as groups depart and new arrivals are flown in from the north. Informal work opportunities are limited, and local tension rises when the job market tightens. Many migrants try to avoid confrontation by keeping a low profile, sending children to play in groups, and moving quickly at dawn or dusk when they head to bus stations. For those who can raise the cash, chartered vans or buses out of Tapachula are the safest option; for everyone else, long walks and cheap second-class buses become the plan.
The policy shifts behind the reverse migration have changed the odds in ways that few predicted even a year ago. After January 2025, the United States moved to restrict access at the border while pressing Mexico to stop people further south. Under President Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico expanded coordination with U.S. agencies, and the reported 93.3% drop in encounters from February to July 2025 compared to the same period in 2024 underscores how quickly northbound migration slowed. The U.S. emphasis on removal flights to Mexico—and the decision to land roughly 87% in southern cities—means that those who do reach the United States and are detained often end up thousands of kilometers from where they crossed, without money or clear legal options to try again. For context on U.S. border enforcement and encounter statistics, readers can consult U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s official data portal at CBP statistics.
Emanuel Herrera said the mood in Mexico City’s shelters shifted after the U.S. election and inauguration. Families who had convinced themselves to wait for weeks or months in northern border towns were suddenly back in the capital or in Tapachula, recalculating everything from school for their children to the sale of a house they left behind. A few still ask about chances in Canada or legal programs elsewhere, but most talk about consolidating what they have left and leaving Mexico. The shelter’s bulletin board, once covered with maps and tips for northbound routes, now includes bus schedules to Guatemala and agencies that issue travel documents for the return journey.
In Tapachula, migrants describe long days that blur together. The city lies close to the Guatemala border in Chiapas, ringed by plantations where day labor is sometimes available. People line up at dawn outside construction sites hoping for a shift. Others sell fruit cups or homemade arepas near the central market. By mid-afternoon, the heat chases most into shade. At night, conversations circle back to the same topics: who left, who was deported, whether anyone heard of a new path forward that doesn’t lead to a cell or a plane back to the south. The talk is slower now, the optimism thinner.
Aid groups in Tapachula and Mexico City say the need has not dropped, even as northbound migration has. Food, shelter, and medical care remain urgent for people who planned for one journey but must now navigate another. Oxfam’s Aguilar said the psychological strain often surfaces in small ways: a father who refuses to let go of his child’s hand in a crowded shelter, a mother who flinches at the sound of motorcycles after being robbed on the road. Counselors try to help people process the pivot from forward motion to retreat. Some families decide to split, sending one parent ahead to test the trip home while the other stays to earn what they can.
For Venezuelans who left during their country’s economic crisis, the idea of returning can feel like a second defeat. Yet after months of waiting in Mexico and watching doors close, many say going back is the only choice. In the courtyards of shelters, people share phone numbers of bus companies that will carry them across multiple borders. They debate whether to move with crowds for safety or in smaller groups to avoid attention. Those who were flown to Tapachula from Ciudad Juárez recount the shock of stepping off the plane into a city they thought they had left behind forever.
As the reverse migration gathers pace, Tapachula has become a mirror of regional policy and human resolve. Every day, the city absorbs new deportees and sends out southbound buses, filling seats with people who once dreamed of jobs in Houston or reuniting with relatives in New Jersey. The flow is quieter than the northbound caravans of past years, but no less consequential. It is visible in money wires sent the other way, in the disappearance of lines at ticket windows for northern routes, and in the whispered calls home where parents explain to their children why they will not be sleeping in the United States after all.
The broader region is adjusting, too. In Paso Canoas, shopkeepers say they can tell which way the wind is blowing by the currencies people carry and the direction of their steps. Southbound travelers spend differently, calculating how to stretch a few remaining bills across multiple borders. Some hope to find work in Colombia or Peru if Venezuela remains out of reach. Others plan to stop with family in Ecuador or to try to rebuild in Panama. For all of them, Tapachula is no longer a springboard but a turning point.
There is no single timeline for how long the reverse migration will last. The drop in Darién crossings early in 2025 suggests a sustained shift, but families say they watch for any sign that doors might reopen. For now, shelter directors, aid workers, and local authorities describe a pattern that is likely to endure: migrants arriving in Tapachula not to rest before heading north, but to gather themselves before going south. The city, once a waypoint for the great push toward the United States, has become the reluctant capital of going back.
This Article in a Nutshell
Tapachula has shifted from a departure point to a return hub as stricter U.S. border policies after January 2025 and deeper Mexico-U.S. cooperation cut northbound migration. UN figures show a 98% drop in Darién crossings Jan–Mar 2025. The U.S. carried out 238 removal flights in 2025, with about 87% landing in southern Mexican cities. Shelters in Tapachula and Mexico City house thousands who are selling goods or taking day labor to finance returns, while aid groups report growing psychological and humanitarian needs.
