Updated January 18, 2025 at 07:00 AM ET
TIJUANA, Mexico — It's noon and the sun is brutal. At the foot of a steep hill, in the shade, a woman with an exhausted stare is rocking her child to sleep.
Cindy Alamie says she can't remember the last time she rested, certainly not back in Buenaventura, the city on Colombia's Pacific coast where she comes from, a place rocked by armed conflict.
She and her husband owned a small store there. He was a peace activist in his free time. Local gangs began demanding higher protection fees. She said, "They told us if we didn't pay, they'd kill our family."
Alamie says the decision to leave home was made in a matter of seconds. They'd head north to the U.S.-Mexico border and hire a coyote (a smuggler) to get them to the other side. Her sister, who lives in California, would be waiting.
Finding a coyote in Tijuana was easy. One guy offered to cross the family of three for $8,000. But folks at Juventud 2000, a shelter in the city, dissuaded them.
"They told us we could get killed out there or caught and sent back to Colombia," she says.
Immigrants like Alamie have decided instead to go the official route by using the CBP One app, which provides an appointment to request legal entry into the U.S. But she's been waiting for five months and is starting to get desperate.
Unauthorized apprehensions at the U.S. southern border have decreased significantly in the past six months — by more than 70% compared with the same period in 2023, according to Customs and Border Protection.
The U.S. government attributes the dip to an executive order issued last summer by President Biden that severely restricts asylum requests from migrants attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border with no authorization. Another factor is the implementation of the CBP One app, and experts say the Mexican national guard cracking down on migrants heading north is playing a key role, as well.
When Biden's successor, President-elect Donald Trump, takes office on Jan. 20, he will be inheriting a quiet border.
Alamie says the date is looming in her mind. "I think about it every day," she says. "I imagine him taking his seat at the White House. And then what's going to happen?"
In addition to ramping up border security, Trump has promised to shut down the CBP One app. "We will stop all migrant flights, end all illegal entries" he posted on X last year, "[and] terminate the Kamala phone app for smuggling illegals," a reference to the app.
Trump's assertion that the app is used to smuggle people across the border is false. Immigrants seeking asylum use the app to make appointments for screening with U.S. government officials to gain legal entry into the country while they wait to seek asylum.
But the lower number of border apprehensions only tells part of the story. Behind the scenes, folks on the ground say major shifts are happening in how people cross the border. "Immigrants are still arriving," says Jose Maria Garcia Lara, director of the Juventud 2000 migrant shelter. "They're just moving underground."
The shelter is just a stone's throw away from the border wall. It's so packed that the floor of the main room is covered in back-to-back sleeping tents. Many people here are Mexicans displaced by narco violence.
On this day, a nonprofit is delivering presents to migrant children. The result is utter chaos. Shrieks of delight are punctuated by beeping toy sounds.
Garcia Lara says this is nothing compared with what it was like early last year. There were so many migrants that people had to camp out in public parks.
"For months now, the number of people arriving at the shelter has gone down," he says. "They're still coming to Tijuana though. Becoming invisible. Hiring coyotes who put them up in motels and safe houses, so they can cross over through more remote parts."
Humanitarian aid groups say the shift has been notable. "Things along the border have changed in the last year to four months," says James Crodero of the volunteer group Border Kindness, which leaves first aid supplies and water for migrants along the border. He says crossings have shifted "from more predictable routes that have been used for years on end, to areas that we don't know. We know for a fact that people are coming across, and it has moved into more dangerous areas."
Outside the Tijuana shelter, in her piece of shade, Alamie says she's reconsidering attempting to cross. The coyote has almost doubled his price, from $8,000 to $15,000.
"It's so close," she sighs, pointing in the direction of the border wall.
There is a general sense of anxiety at the shelter. Near where Alamie is sitting, a group of women wash clothing at a furious pace.
They're all from Michoacán, Mexico, and say they're all fleeing drug violence. They keep trying to get a CBP One appointment with no luck, and they know their window of opportunity is closing. But they don't want to cross without documents or hire a coyote.
When asked if they'd ever go back home, one woman, Marta, who asks that her last name be withheld fearing cartel violence, smiles wearily. Without pausing her scrubbing, she answers: "Never. But we can't move forward either. We're stuck."
On the other side of the city, in a neighborhood up in the hills, a man named Samuel makes a living getting people like Marta and Alamie unstuck. Samuel is a coyote.
He will not give his last name because what he does is illegal in both countries. And like all coyotes, he has to give a cut of his profits to a cartel. He won't tell me which one. He simply refers to them as "los mañosos,'" or "the slick ones."
Samuel says crossing costs between $9,000 and $12,000 for a family. He says he's heard of coyotes who can "get violent" with women but that he's always been respectful.
These days, he says, migrants get crossed through deeper parts of the desert. It's dangerous terrain, and can take up to a week, but it's less patrolled by Mexican authorities and U.S. Border Patrol. "We don't get caught. We have ways," he says.
An unassuming middle-aged man, Samuel is surveilling as we speak, his eyes darting around. He speaks in short sentences unless he gets heated, like when he's asked if the incoming Trump administration could hurt his business. "The U.S. can put up a wall," he says. "But you better make sure it reaches the sky. Because there's no such thing as a problem for us. Like a mouse, we'll find a hole."
Several miles up, on the other side of the border, many people envision a very different future under Trump's administration, one with an impenetrable border.
Kate Monroe is the founder of Border Vets, a group of military veterans that advocate for stronger border security. We meet her on the San Diego side of the border, in what's known as the Jacumba Wilderness.
NPR has reported extensively in this region. In the past few years, it's been the site of massive informal open-air detention camps. "Up until just a few months ago, you would see 500 to 1,000 people a day crossing in every single hole along this border, in broad daylight," she says. That sight scared her. "Americans, we don't have to go quietly into the night. We can stand up and fight that," referring to illegal crossings.
Still, for the last few months, it's been quieter out here as border crossings go down or, depending on who you ask, go further underground.
Monroe's hope is that the incoming president takes border enforcement further. She says she's looking forward to seeing mass deportations of immigrants with criminal records.
"I think everyone can agree that those people should go," she says. Monroe also hopes to see a strengthened Border Patrol and the wall finished.
Being an advocate for tougher immigration and border enforcement doesn't mean she doesn't have compassion for immigrants, she says. Particularly when it comes to the risks and dangers women face.
Monroe says her military career ended after a brutal sexual assault. When she hears migrant women's stories and the way sexual assault is often seen as the "price to pay" for making the trek to the U.S., it reminds her of what she endured. "It disgusts me," she says. "It pains me and my spirit."
If anything, she would like to see border security and deportations combined with immigration reform that allows for orderly migration. "If we really want people in our country, we need to build workforce housing, change our visa program, reimagine the way that we handle immigration. All these jobs we say Americans don't want, we need to put together a plan to get labor here in a way that doesn't get them assaulted, robbed and killed on the way here."
As we talk, we see a family walking by the border wall. They're the first migrants I've seen out here in three days.
They look terrified to see us.
Monroe gives them water. Two of the girls, ages 4 and 11, start sobbing. Their puffy winter jackets are covered in desert dust. Their father, Ronald, hugs them and cries. "It's over," he whispers in their ear. "We're no longer running away. Nothing can happen to us now."
The family is from Venezuela. They've been on the move for a month. They say it felt too scary to wait in Mexico hoping to get an official appointment for entry into the U.S., so they hired a coyote. When asked about that experience, Ronald's voice cracks as he says, "To those people, we are nothing but merchandise."
In a matter of seconds, before he can tell us his last name or the rest of his story, Border Patrol agents arrive.
"Can you imagine how humiliating?" Monroe says, pointing at Ronald as he crouches to remove his shoelaces, a standard Border Patrol request, while his daughters watch. "Is this what compassion looks like?" she asks as the family is loaded into the patrol car.
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