President Donald Trump campaigned on securing the nation's borders and deporting undocumented

immigrants he described as dangerous criminals. Since taking office as administration has pursued

an aggressive enforcement agenda, deploying ICE agents, conducting workplace and neighborhood

sweeps, and ramping up deportations. As a result, migrants planning a new life in the U.S. are increasingly reconsidering the risky track north.

Welcome to USA Today's The Excert. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Monday, November 10, 2025.

Trump's crackdown on undocumented migration is now contributing to a reversal of

flows in Mexico and Central America. Longtime immigration reporter Daniel Gonzalez of the Arizona

Republic traveled to Mexico's southern border and to Panama to speak with migrants reevaluating

their American dream.

Daniel, thank you so much for coming on the excerpt.

Thank you so much for having me.

Let's start with what border crossing numbers look like now.

How drastic is the change at the U.S.-Mexico border?

Impact at the southern border is very, very dramatic.

I've been writing about immigration here in Arizona for 25 years,

and I've never seen a situation like we have now where there's so few people crossing.

We visited the border extensively back in April,

and there were hardly any migrants crossing at all. It's a very,

very remarkable dramatic decrease in migration following record numbers of encounters that were

taking place during the previous four years. Just to give you an example, in August of 2023,

border-wide, there were 232,000 encounters of undocumented people along the southern border.

In August of this year, there were 9,000. So it gives you an idea of what a

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