Human traffickers are telling migrants it’s “now or never” if they want to enter the US across the southern border, says a report from The Wall Street Journal.
The report claims smugglers, many of whom work for Mexico’s drug cartels, are using social-media apps like WhatsApp to deliver messages to migrants encouraging them to flood the border before 20 January, when Trump takes office.
“Trump’s victory has generated a lot of nervousness, and the smugglers are taking advantage of that,” a Mexican worker told the Journal.
Trump is expected to announce a number of day-one executive orders when he takes office, including sending National Guard troops to the southern border and declaring a national emergency so he can resume construction of his border wall.
Trump is also expected to reinstate the Title 42 policy from the pandemic, to allow swift deportation without the possibility of making an asylum application.
Last week, Trump named the formidable Tom Homan as his Border Czar. Homan ran ICE during the first Trump admin and was responsible for the controversial “family separation” policy.
Homan has made clear his support for Trump’s immigration plans and promised that they will be unlike anything the country has ever carried out before. In an interview over the summer, he said Trump’s opponents “ain’t seen sh*t yet… Wait until 2025.”
When asked in a recent interview with 60 Minutes whether mass deportation would require family separation, Homan suggested it “needs to be considered absolutely.”
“Their parent absolutely entered the country illegally, had a child knowing he was in the country illegally,” Homan explained. “So he created that crisis.”
Homan has also said that the Trump administration will “wipe [the cartels] from the face of the earth.”
Trump has confirmed that he will be moving ahead with his policy of mass deportation and that there will be “no price tag” attached to the scheme.
“It’s not a question of a price tag. It’s not—really, we have no choice,” Trump explained recently, in an interview with NBC.