The Trump administration is off to a good start with deportations though many more need to be carried out.
Deportations affect different people in different ways.
The Telegraph recently ran an interesting article entitled, “Trump sent me back to Mexico. I can’t thank him enough.”
Many of the early deportees were already in prison, so it’s easy to remove them.
In a rush to get them out of the country, their sentences are being cut short. And they’re grateful for that.
The Trump administration deported 7,000 illegal aliens in its first week.
One of these deportees was Carlos Suezo, a 54-year-old illegal alien from Honduras.
Suezo had lived in the U.S.A. for 32 years (!) before his conviction on weapons charges in 2017. As a result, he was deported.
In fact, he was deported twice, but of course he returned to the U.S.A., as is customary.
That’s how he ended up back in prison, where he was still serving time in January of 2025.
Suezo had one month to go on his six-month sentence (for two illegal re-entries) when he was awoken in prison.
“You’re leaving, you’re leaving!” shouted the prison guard. Why? “Trump doesn’t want you here,” Suezo was told.
So Suezo and 11 others were flown to El Paso, Texas, from whence he was sent walking over a bridge into Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
“I started crying with happiness,” said Suezo of his release into Mexico.
Suezo was now free and out of prison a month early!
As the Telegraph puts it, “while the [deportation] policy may have triggered outrage, it has proved popular with certain criminal migrants.”
After all, they get their sentences shortened!
Suezo had just a month cut off his sentence, but a couple of his fellow deportees, who were in prison for smuggling drugs across the border while entering illegally, saw their sentences shortened by two years! They were “so happy” reports Suezo.
What does the now-free Suezo plan to do?
For now, he’s staying in Mexico on a visa, helping prepare camps which are being established to receive deportees there.
Suezo doesn’t plan to re-enter the U.S., but rather return to Honduras.
“I love Trump,” says Suezo. “My whole family is for Trump.”
The Honduran said he would have voted for Trump if he could.
The Telegraph piece also discusses non-Mexican migrants who did not make it into the U.S. before Trump’s crackdown.
The U.K. paper interviewed Colombian Margelis Tinoco, who is stuck in Mexico.
She and her husband and son were in the process of entering the U.S. via the infamous CBP One app, but their appointment was cancelled when Trump took office. Footage of Margelis weeping at the border went viral on social media.
Nevertheless, she is not bitter at the U.S. President and said that Trump should deport those who’ve been “damaging the country.”
“People are still going to cross in the outskirts of town where there are holes in the wall, mesh holes coyotes cover up and then remove to smuggle people into the U.S.,” a Mexican National Guard officer told the Telegraph.
Better get those holes filled!
The article quotes Kenneth Salazar (not to be confused with former U.S. ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar), a taxi driver in Ciudad Juarez and dual U.S.-Mexico citizen (there are a lot of those these days).
Salazar says crime has increased in the city amid a surge of migrants arriving with hopes of crossing the border, and he’s concerned it will get even worse as more foreigners flood the zone.
(Curiously, open borders boosters tell us it’s exactly the opposite on the U.S. side of the border, where mass immigration doesn’t increase crime. I guess it’s that “magic dirt” in the United States!)
Looking at the big picture, we see that Trump’s policies impact many people, but those affected don’t always react the way we might expect.
Keep the deportations going!