A new report from the countries of Colombia, Panama, and Costa Rica reveals President Trump’s border policies are catalyzing over 14,000 migrants who planned to enter the United States to reverse direction.
“Migrants traveling south interviewed in Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia by those countries’ ombudsmen offices were almost all Venezuelans (97%) and about half of them said they planned to return to Venezuela, according to the report,” the Associated Press reported. “Nearly all said they were returning because they could no longer legally reach the U.S.”
Reasons cited by the immigrants for reversing course in the report, which came from a commission formed by the Office of the Ombudsman of Costa Rica and the Ombudsmen’s Offices of Panama and Colombia, with help from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, included: Refusal of entry to the United States (49%); changes in immigration policy (46%): fear of detention or deportation (17%), and lack of financial resources (34%), according to the Tico Times.
The report stated that northward migration plunged 97% in 2025.
One immigrant stated, “It’s time to go back — the American dream wasn’t like this.”
In April, The Atlantic noted, “For the first time in recent history, the people passing through Central America are mostly moving south. The new migration flow seems to have been triggered by the Trump administration’s crackdown on both legal and illegal crossings at the southern U.S. border.” In March, Omer Badilla Toledo, who supervises migration policy for the Costa Rican government, said his country was processing over 200,000 asylum applications.
When President Trump took office on January 20, he issued a proclamation that noted that the Immigration and Nationality Act states that “[w]henever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”
He added, “I hereby proclaim, pursuant to sections 212(f) and 215(a) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1182(f) and 1185(a), that aliens engaged in the invasion across the southern border of the United States on or after the date of this proclamation are restricted from invoking provisions of the INA that would permit their continued presence in the United States, including, but not limited to, section 208 of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1158, until I issue a finding that the invasion at the southern border has ceased.”