By Alexandra Ulmer and Lizbeth Diaz
PIEDRAS NEGRAS/TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - After Honduran migrant Alex Diaz' U.S. asylum appointment was canceled following Donald Trump's immigration and border crackdown, the 23-year-old former bus driver began considering what he had been determined to avoid: entering the United States illegally.
Since Trump ended former President Joe Biden's legal entry program at the border and is ramping up border security, Diaz is considering using smugglers who would bring him deeper into the United States, along isolated pathways.
"I didn't want to come in illegally. But Trump can't take the American dream from me," Diaz told Reuters outside a shelter in the Mexican border town of Piedras Negras.
He said smugglers were quoting him $7,000 to reach the Texan city of San Antonio, roughly 146 miles (235 kilometers) away.
Unsure whether his siblings in Louisiana could assemble the money and worried about his safety on potentially perilous routes, Diaz was still pondering whether to attempt a crossing.
As part of his announced crackdown on migrants at the U.S.-Mexican border, Trump on Monday shut down Biden's CBP One program, which allowed migrants in Mexico to schedule an appointment to request asylum at a legal border crossing.
Migrants like Diaz now face pricier, riskier smuggling routes into the United States, according to interviews with a half-dozen migrants, one smuggler and U.S. law enforcement.
Record numbers of migrants were caught crossing illegally under Biden and many were released into the U.S. with pending immigration court hearings. Biden implemented asylum restrictions in June 2024, which Biden officials said partly contributed to a steep drop in migrant apprehensions.
The Trump rule changes, aimed at stopping what he terms an "invasion" at the border, are operating alongside the existing Biden restrictions implemented last year, a Trump administration official said.
The effect of the overlapping restrictions remained unclear during Trump's first days in office. Trump's border czar Tom Homan said on Wednesday that Border Patrol had apprehended 766 migrants attempting to cross illegally the previous day, about half the daily average in December.
One Mexican smuggler, speaking on condition of anonymity, said prices had gone up in part due to more restrictions on the U.S. side.
BUSINESS FOR SMUGGLERS
Valeriano Perez, an investigator with the sheriff's office in the Texan border county of Maverick, says he expects cartels to take migrants on riskier routes across the desert and drive them further from the border.
"They're going to have to figure out a way for them to pass the checkpoints, for them to get sent to the northern cities. It makes the job longer for the cartels," Perez told Reuters.
As a consequence, he added, his office, which has a total of around 80 deputies and jailers, would likely increase patrols in the brush and along highways. Given the use of more dangerous routes, Perez said he expected to find more dead migrants.
Roberto, a shopkeeper from southern Mexico who had been waiting in Tijuana for his CBP One appointment on Jan. 22, is crushed now that the price charged by smugglers to help migrants cross has shot up to 140,000 Mexican pesos ($6,900) from roughly 85,000 Mexican pesos ($4,200).
"Trump has given the business back to smugglers, because people are going to keep crossing no matter what," said Roberto, 34, who did not want to share his last name out of safety concerns.
"I'm going to stay in Tijuana and get the money together to cross."
Some migrants, put off by the prices or the risk of ramped-up deportations under Trump once in the United States, are opting to stay in Mexico.
But Diaz, the Honduran migrant at the Piedras Negras shelter, says he is determined to get to the U.S., in part because he has two young children to support in Honduras.
He missed an asylum appointment earlier this month because he said he was kidnapped by a gang in Mexico while on a bus to the border and beaten for three days until his relatives paid $1,000 to free him.
Now, he is waiting to hear back from friends who recently crossed the border illegally to see if it worked out for them before possibly trying himself.
"I want to cross but I'm scared they're going to catch me," Diaz said.
($1 = 20.3069 Mexican pesos)