Mexico drops migrants in Acapulco as it disperses them far from U.S. border

People sleep on sheets of cardboard on a sidewalk.

By Antonio Castillo and María Verza

Jan. 7, 2025 8:50 AM PT

ACAPULCO — About 100 migrants from various countries wandered directionless and disoriented through the streets of the troubled Pacific coast resort of Acapulco.

After walking for a couple weeks through southern Mexico with hundreds of other migrants, they accepted an offer from immigration officials to come to Acapulco with the idea they could continue their journey north toward the U.S. border. Instead, they found themselves stuck Monday.

Two weeks ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s second inauguration, Mexico continues dissolving attention-grabbing migrant caravans and dispersing migrants throughout the country to keep them far from the U.S. border, while simultaneously limiting how many accumulate in any one place.

The policy of “dispersion and exhaustion” has become the center of the Mexican government’s immigration policy in recent years and last year succeeded in significantly reducing the number of migrants reaching the U.S. border, said Tonatiuh Guillén, former chief of Mexico’s immigration agency.

Mexico’s current administration hopes that the lower numbers will give it some defense from Trump’s pressures, said Guillén, who left the administration of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador after Trump threatened to impose tariffs over migration during his first presidency.

Acapulco would seem to be a strange destination for migrants. Once a crown jewel of Mexico’s tourism industry, the city now suffers under the thumb of organized crime and is still struggling to climb back after taking a direct hit from devastating Hurricane Otis in 2023.

On Monday, Mexican tourists enjoyed the final hours of their holiday beach vacations while migrants slept in the street or tried to find ways to resume their journeys north.

“Immigration [officials] told us they were going to give us a permit to transit the country freely for 10, 15 days, and it wasn’t like that,” said a 28-year-old Venezuelan, Ender Antonio Castañeda. “They left us dumped here without any way to get out. They won’t sell us [bus] tickets, they won’t sell us anything.”

Castañeda, like thousands of other migrants, had left the southern city of Tapachula near the Guatemalan border. More than a half-dozen caravans of about 1,500 migrants each have set out from Tapachula in recent weeks, but none of them made it very far.

Authorities let them walk for days until they’re exhausted and then offer to bus them to various cities where they say their immigration status will be reviewed, which could mean any number of things.

Some have landed in Acapulco, where about a dozen sleep at a Catholic church near the immigration agency offices.

Several dozen gathered outside the offices Monday looking for information, but no one would tell them anything. Castañeda, who had just received money from his family and was desperate to leave, picked a van driver he judged to be the most trustworthy among various offering rides for up to five times the normal price for a bus ticket to Mexico City.

Some migrants have discovered the permits authorities give them allow them to travel only within the state of Guerrero, where Acapulco is located. Other migrants have better luck.

On Sunday, the latest migrant caravan broke up after hundreds received free transit permits to go anywhere in Mexico for a specified number of days.

Cuban Dayani Sánchez, 33, and her husband were among them.

“We’re a little scared by the lack of safety getting on buses, that they’re going to stop us,” she said. Mexico’s drug cartels frequently target migrants for kidnapping and extortion, though many migrants say authorities extort from them too.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum says her immigration strategy has a “humanitarian” focus, and has allowed more migrants to leave southernmost Mexico. But some migration advocates note that people are being taken to violent areas.

It’s a concern shared by the Rev. Leopoldo Morales, the priest at the Catholic church in Acapulco near the immigration agency office.

He said that in November two or three immigration agency buses arrived with migrants, including entire families. Last weekend, two more arrived carrying all adults.

Even though Acapulco isn’t on the usual migration route and was unprepared to receive migrants, several priests have coordinated support for them with water, food and clothing. “We know they’re going through a very difficult time, with a lot of needs. They arrive without money,” Morales said.

Migrants quickly realize that finding work in Acapulco is difficult. After Otis’ destruction, the federal government sent hundreds of soldiers and National Guard troops to provide security and start reconstruction. Last year, another storm, John, brought widespread flooding.

But violence in Acapulco hasn’t relented.

Acapulco has one of Mexico’s highest rates of homicides. Cab drivers and small-business owners complain — anonymously — of rising extortion. Large companies have balked at rebuilding under the current circumstances.

Honduran Jorge Neftalí Alvarenga was grateful to have escaped the Mexican state of Chiapas along the Guatemalan border, but was already disillusioned.

“To an extent they lied to us,” said Alvarenga, who thought he was going to Mexico City. “We asked for an agreement to send us to [Mexico City] for work” or other places such as Monterrey, an industrial city in the north with more work opportunities.

Now he doesn’t know what to do.

Castillo and Verza write for the Associated Press. The AP’s Edgar H. Clemente in Tapachula, Mexico, contributed to this report.