Migrants discouraged by President Trump’s hardline immigration policies are giving up and making “U-turns” back to their home countries, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.
Rubio said he’s been working to establish relationships with other countries — particularly those in Central America — as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to stop the flow of migrants pouring over the southern border and to deport migrants back to their native countries.
“I had a call yesterday with one of these countries — they now have people doing U-turns. They were on their way here and they realized, okay, [the US is] not playing around anymore, President Trump is serious, and they’ve done a U-turn,” Rubio said in an appearance on Fox and Friends Wednesday morning.
“They’re trying to go back to their country. We’re seeing that happen. And that is as a result of President Trump’s very clear leadership on migration,” he added.
“People that are coming here realize that this isn’t [former President] Joe Biden,” the secretary said. “Under President Trump, you’re not just gonna be able to come in and claim asylum and stay forever.”
Rubio said several of the countries he’s spoken with have agreed not only to receive repatriation flights of their own nationals — but will take in those from other countries who have entered the US illegally.
“We can send them to those countries and they have a choice: They can go back to their home country or they can go to these countries. These are powerful tools. And that’s why you’re now seeing historically low numbers under President Trump,” he said.
Illegal border crossings have plummeted to levels not seen in decades since Trump’s swift crackdown on illegal immigration — down a whopping 94% from the same time period last year, Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks told CBS News last week.
In what authorities call a “reverse flow” of migrants, speed boats in Panama that were once part of a lucrative human smuggling stretch transporting people to the US border are now returning asylum seekers back to the countries they fled.
Many of them had waited months — sometimes more than a year — in Mexico to get an asylum appointment in the U.S. through a Biden-era CBP One app, which Trump then terminated.
“When Trump arrived and eliminated the application (CBP One) all our hopes went up in smoke,” said Karla Castillo, a 36-year-old Venezuelan traveling south with her younger sister.
With Post Wires
