Six months ago Francisco Fortín was attacked by gangs wielding machetes in his home country of Honduras, he said, an act of violence that cemented a decision to quit his impoverished and trouble-plagued homeland.
Last Sunday, with wounds on his chest, leg and back healing, he and his partner Annie finally left and crossed into Guatemala. They had wanted to go to the United States to work. But now, things have changed.
The couple reached Guatemala City on Tuesday. They said they have no money left and so will walk towards the border with Mexico, staying at shelters along the way — an estimated 11-day trek.
Asked if their final destination of the US was off the table, Fortín replied: “The destination is wherever we can work.”
‘Trump has arrived’
Father Francisco Pellizzari has seen the atmosphere change at the Casa del Migrante shelter he runs in the Guatemalan capital.
“A lot of people now, they are scared, they are very scared of the situation,” he said. “For now, they stop” trying to reach the United States.
The families may have left home months ago, they may have walked hundreds of miles, survived the Darién Gap route, and been robbed or attacked by gangs or cartels. The thought of facing more danger through Mexico and then having no chance of entering the US – now that the border is essentially closed – is too much risk to bear.
Jean Claude Silva Fuenmayor, a 23-year-old from Venezuela, who had spent a year in Mexico City waiting to get an appointment with a US immigration officer through the now-defunct CBP One app, was clear on what had changed.
“Trump has arrived,” he said, as he ate a breakfast of tamales and a hard-boiled egg offered by the Casa del Migrante.
The changes to immigration policy ordered by President Donald Trump on his first day in office seem to have had a deep impact. The CBP One app that had allowed migrants to make an appointment with an immigration official and enter the US legally was shut down within minutes of the presidential oath being taken.
Without that legal avenue – even for asylum seekers fleeing persecution who have historically always been allowed into the US – those on the road are having to rethink their options.
Manuel Rodriguez, 25, traveling with his wife and their three children aged 10, six and four, said he would not take his family back to Venezuela, where the economic situation was so bad they ate only once a day.
They left Venezuela five months ago, he said, and had reached Guatemala’s border with Mexico, but had not crossed, saying that with cartels preying on migrants, it was too dangerous to linger in Mexico without assurances they’d be able to make it into the US.
His wife, Waleska Veliz, 26, said she understood Trump’s wish to rid the US of violent immigrants such as members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, and supports the US strictly vetting migrants, but she felt it unjust to have blanket action against everyone.
“We’ve never been in jail; we’ve never committed any crimes. What we want is to enter (the US) to create a better future for our family,” Veliz said. “And (President Trump) is getting rid of everybody, good people and bad people. And he shouldn’t do it that way.”
Another asylum seeker, Patrick Songu, from Sierra Leone said it was not safe for him to return to west Africa.
“We don’t know what we can do,” he explained.
Songu, 40, said he desperately wanted to find safety. Emotion then caught up with him and he was unable to speak further.
His traveling companion, Yebit Pryde, a nurse who said he had been jailed amid civil strife between the French-speaking and English-speaking communities in Cameroon, took up the conversation.
“It really is a catastrophe,” he said. “America was built by immigrants, Trump himself is (the son of) an immigrant, I don’t think him sending away immigrants … is the best.”
Still, he would not try to enter the US illegally. “I will wait in Mexico,” said Pryde, 45. “If there is no legal pathway to get in then I must choose any of the South American countries to seek asylum there.”
Unfulfilled dreams
Orlando Chajchic was deported two weeks before Trump took office, but he said he had seen enough in detention and the changing attitudes in the US to not want to return.
Chajchic said he overstayed a visa and ended up living undocumented in Dallas for 20 years.
He had spent some time in the church-run migrant shelter, but now he planned to restart his life back in Guatemala.
And he had something to say to any of the migrants in the shelter with him, spoken either in his native Spanish or English, perfected from decades in the north.
“My advice is right now, it’s better to stay where you (are).”
That’s the message a family from Colombia has taken to heart.
21-year-old Stephanie Niño, her mother, younger brother and 3-year-old son, had spent three months in Tapachula, on the Mexican side of the border with Guatemala, waiting to get an appointment through the CBP One app.
When the app shut down, their hopes of reuniting with family in Denver were dashed, she said.
“We’re going to just work and try to provide for our kids,” Niño said when asked what she planned to do upon returning to Colombia.
Her mother, Paula Mansipe, spoke of her heartbreak.
“We had a lot of dreams we could not fulfill.”