U.S. Customs and Border Protection A Predator B drone flies over an undisclosed location in this undated photograph. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

A Delta Airlines plane sits at El Paso International Airport after the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration lifted its temporary closure of the airspace over El Paso, saying all flights will resume as normal and that there was no threat to commercial aviation in El Paso, Texas, U.S., on February 11, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Ciudad Juarez, Mexico:

Mexican authorities have begun constructing giant tent shelters in the city of Ciudad Juarez to prepare for a possible influx of Mexicans deported under U.S. President Donald Trump’s promised mass deportations.

The temporary shelters in Ciudad Juarez will have the capacity to house thousands of people and should be ready in a matter of days, said municipal official Enrique Licon.

“It’s unprecedented,” Licon said on Tuesday afternoon, as workers unloaded long metal bracings from tractor trailers parked in the large empty lot yards from the Rio Grande, which separates the city from El Paso, Texas.

The tents in Ciudad Juarez are part of the Mexican government’s plan to ready shelters and reception centers in nine cities across northern Mexico.

Authorities at the site will provide deported Mexicans with food, temporary housing, medical care, and assistance obtaining identity documents, according to a government document outlining the strategy, called “Mexico embraces you.”

The government is also planning to have a fleet of buses ready to transport Mexicans from the reception centers back to their hometowns.

Trump has vowed to carry out the largest deportation effort in U.S. history, which would remove millions of immigrants. An operation of that scale, however, would likely take years and be hugely costly.

Nearly five million Mexicans are living in the United States without authorization, according to an analysis by Mexican think tank El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF) based on recent U.S. census data.

Many are from parts of central and southern Mexico wracked by violence and poverty. Some 800,000 undocumented Mexicans in the United States are from Michoacan, Guerrero, and Chiapas, according to the COLEF study, where fierce battles between organized crime groups have forced thousands to flee in recent years, sometimes leaving whole towns abandoned.

MEXICO COULD STRUGGLE

The Mexican government says it is ready for the possibility of mass deportations. But immigration advocates have their doubts, fearing that the combination of mass deportations and Trump’s measures to prevent migrants from entering the U.S. could quickly saturate Mexican border cities.

The Trump administration on Monday ended a program, known as CBP One, that allowed some migrants waiting in Mexico to enter the U.S. legally by obtaining an appointment on a government app. On Tuesday it said it was reinstating Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), an initiative that forced non-Mexican asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for the resolution of their U.S. cases.

On Monday, Jose Luis Perez, then director of migration issues for Tijuana, became one of the few Mexican officials to raise public concerns about whether Mexico was really prepared.

“Basically, with the cancellation of CBP One and deportations, the government isn’t coordinated to receive them,” he said.

Hours later, he was fired in what he said was retaliation for issuing such warnings.

The municipal government did not answer questions about his termination.

“Mexico will do everything necessary to care for its compatriots, and will allocate whatever is necessary to receive those who are repatriated,” Mexico’s Interior Minister Rosa Icela said on Monday during the daily morning press conference.

But with sluggish economic growth projected this year, Mexico could struggle to absorb millions of Mexicans deported from the U.S., while a significant drop in remittances could cause “serious economic disruptions” in the towns and villages across the country that depend on such income, said Wayne Cornelius, distinguished emeritus professor at the University of California-San Diego.

On Thursday evening in Ciudad Juarez, some two dozen soldiers worked at the tent shelter near a tall black cross where in 2016, Pope Francis held an open-air Mass, warned of a humanitarian crisis, and prayed for migrants. The soldiers, in the deepening darkness, began constructing an industrial kitchen to feed the deported.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Washington DC:

President Donald Trump announced severe new restrictions on immigration and asylum in the United States hours after taking office Monday, declaring that he will send troops to the US-Mexico border and attempt to end birthright citizenship.

Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border and used a careening press conference in the Oval Office to announce the controversial order seeking to revoke the right of US nationality to anyone born in America.

“That’s a big one,” he told reporters.

The move to reverse a right enshrined in the US Constitution will face stiff legal challenges, an inevitability the president acknowledged.

“I think we have good grounds, but you could be right,” he said when asked about the pushback.

Another executive order declared a national emergency on the US-Mexico border.

“I’m fine with legal immigration. I like it. We need people, and I’m absolutely fine with it. We want to have it,” he said.

“But we have to have legal immigration.”

Earlier, in his inaugural speech, he announced he would be sending troops to the US-Mexico border “to repel the disastrous invasion of our country.” 

“All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came,” he said.

White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly announced earlier that the administration would end the practice of granting asylum.

Appointments Canceled

The first effects of Trump’s stance became apparent minutes after his inauguration when an app unveiled under president Joe Biden to help process asylum seekers went offline.

US media reported 30,000 people had appointments scheduled.

Trump’s key adviser and noted immigration hardliner Stephen Miller took to social media to announce that the doors were shut.

“All illegal aliens seeking entry into the United States should turn back now,” he wrote.

“Anyone entering the United States without authorization faces prosecution and expulsion.”

Kelly said the administration would also reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy that prevailed under Trump’s first administration.

Under that rule, people who apply to enter the United States at the Mexican border were not allowed to do so until their application had been decided.

On the US-Mexican border, there was despair.

“Since we are here, please let us in,” said Yaime Perez, a 27-year-old Cuban.

“Please, after all the work we have put in to get here, let us enter your country, so that we can better ourselves in life and be somebody,” she said.

Court Challenges

Kelly said Trump would seek to use the death penalty against non-citizens who commit capital crimes including murder.

“This is about national security. This is about public safety, and this is about the victims of some of the most violent, abusive criminals we’ve seen enter our country in our lifetime, and it ends today,” she said.

Many of Trump’s first-term executive actions were rescinded under Biden, including one using so-called Title 42, implemented during the Covid pandemic preventing almost all entry to the country on public health grounds.

The changes under Biden led to an influx of migrants, with images of thousands of people packing the border area.

Trump frequently invoked dark imagery about how illegal migration was “poisoning the blood” of the nation, words that were seized upon by opponents as reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

Analysts say any effort to alter birthright citizenship will be fraught.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said the 14th Amendment was “crystal clear” in granting citizenship to anyone born in the United States with the exception of children of foreign diplomats. 

“We have had birthright citizenship for centuries, and a president cannot take it away with an executive order,” he told AFP. “We expect rapid court challenges.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

The surge of migrants crossing the US border from Mexico has pushed the city of El Paso, Texas, to “a breaking point,” with more than 2,000 people per day seeking asylum, exceeding shelter capacity and straining resources, its mayor said Saturday.

“The city of El Paso only has so many resources and we have come to … a breaking point right now,” Mayor Oscar Leeser said.

The crush of largely Venezuelan asylum seekers is part of a larger swell of immigrants who traveled dangerous routes on buses and cargo trains to Mexican border towns near San Diego, California, and the Texas cities of El Paso and Eagle Pass.

Migrant numbers had plummeted in recent months, and the recent dramatic increase has generated a new wave of political attacks on U.S. President Joe Biden heading into the 2024 election.

Lesser told a news conference that El Paso plans to open a new shelter, and on Saturday chartered five buses to take migrants to New York, Chicago and Denver.

Republican governors in Texas and Florida have been criticized for sending migrants to cities perceived as liberal such as New York and Sacramento. But Leeser, a Democrat, said all of the migrants on the El Paso buses were going voluntarily to the cities of their choice.

Leeser said the Biden had been a good partner. But he said the overall U.S. immigration system was broken.

Many migrants from Venezuela, he said, lacked transportation to their desired destinations, while El Paso’s current shelter houses only 400 people, and must also be available to help the homeless.

As recently as six weeks ago, about 350-400 people were crossing into El Paso per day, but the past few days have brought 2,000 or more.

Over the past 10 days, the city has worked with the U.S. Border Patrol to provide shelter for 6,500 people, he said.

About two-thirds of those crossing into El Paso currently are single men, he said. About 32% are families and just 2% are unaccompanied children.

“I think it’s really important to note that we have a broken immigration system,” he said. “It’s the same thing over and over again.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)