VILLAHERMOSA, Mexico—Jairo Salvador Salinas, a migrant from Honduras, was riding a northbound train toward the Mexico-U.S. border. But Mexican immigration officials detained him at a checkpoint near the city of Monterrey, just 100 miles south of the border. Instead of being deported back to Central America, he was put on a flight to southern Mexico.
“I don’t have any support here,” he said from a shelter for migrants in Villahermosa, a city on the Gulf Coast closer to his native Honduras than the U.S. border.
Migrant encounters at the U.S. southwestern border have fallen precipitously throughout 2024 as migrants like Salinas are increasingly thwarted on their journeys through Mexico.
The question is why.
The White House has credited the decline to restrictions enacted in June on asylum-seekers not making their claims at authorized ports of entry. U.S….
