Monday, November 10, 2025 episode of the podcast The Excerpt: For the first time in decades, migration flows are reversing. The Arizona Republic’s Daniel Gonzalez joins The Excerpt to explain why thousands of immigrants are giving up on their American dreams and what that means for the region’s future.
Press play in the player below to listen to the podcast and follow the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated and edited in its current format for clarity. There may be some differences between audio and text.
Podcast: For true crime stories, in-depth interviews, and more USA TODAY podcasts, click here
Dana Taylor:
President Donald Trump has called for border security and the deportation of illegal immigrants he views as dangerous criminals. Since taking office, his administration has pursued aggressive enforcement policies, deploying ICE agents, conducting workplace and neighborhood cleanups, and stepping up deportations. As a result, immigrants planning new lives in the United States are increasingly reconsidering the dangerous journey north. Welcome to USA TODAY Excerpt, I’m Dana Taylor. Today is Monday, November 10, 2025. President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration is currently helping reverse the influx of people in Mexico and Central America. Daniel Gonzalez, a longtime immigration reporter for the Arizona Republic, traveled to Mexico’s southern border and Panama to speak with immigrants who are reevaluating the American dream.
Daniel, thank you so much for joining us on The Excerpt.
Daniel Cox-Gonzalez:
Thank you so much for having me.
Dana Taylor:
Let’s start with what the number of people crossing the border is currently. How drastic is the U.S.-Mexico border changing?
Daniel Cox-Gonzalez:
The impact on the southern border is very dramatic. I’ve been writing about immigration here in Arizona for 25 years, and I’ve never seen so few people cross the border as we are now. We visited the border extensively in April and saw very few migrants crossing. This is a very remarkable and dramatic drop in migration following the record number of encounters that have occurred over the past four years. As an example, in August 2023, across the border, there were 232,000 encounters with illegal aliens along the southern border. In August of this year, there were 9,000 people. So this tells us how significantly fewer people are trying to enter the United States at the border – asylum seekers and people trying to enter the country illegally.
Dana Taylor:
Daniel, immigration is not only slowing down, it’s even reversing, with many would-be border crossers turning around and heading back south. where will they go? Are they returning to their home country?
Daniel Cox-Gonzalez:
Now, when I visited the southern border of Mexico and Panama, I encountered a new and increasing phenomenon: people heading south. Those heading south include immigrants who were on their way to the U.S. and decided it wasn’t worth continuing their journey to the U.S. after hearing about the government shutdown, hearing that immigrants who entered the country illegally were being arrested and facing criminal charges, and seeing footage of aggressive ICE arrests in cities across the country. Many of the migrants heading to the United States come from very specific countries, primarily Venezuela, Cuba, and Haiti, and the migrants we met along the way were trying to return to Venezuela or another country in the region where they felt they might have a better life.
Dana Taylor:
I want to talk about the people you talked about, many of whom wanted to come to the United States, some even wanted to sell everything they had and come north. Please tell me about one of them.
Daniel Cox-Gonzalez:
When I arrived in Panama, we drove to this small fishing boat pier. There were people gathered there, all holding plastic bags. And what they were doing was getting ready to board a fishing boat to go back to Colombia and then back to Venezuela. Then I met a man. A young man, probably in his late 30s, he was with his father who was in his 60s, and then they were with their extended family. There were 9 people in total. And what happened to them was that they were trying to get to the United States, stopping in Chiapas, Mexico, doing construction work there, trying to save enough money to get to the U.S. border, and also waiting to see if these policies would continue.
And when they realized there was really no hope of entering the United States, they decided to change direction. So they have already come back from southern Mexico through Central America and are now in Panama waiting to board a ship back to Venezuela. And they sold everything they owned in Venezuela to start this journey, and now they were borrowing money to go back to Venezuela. I remember asking the man, “What’s going through your mind right now as you prepare to board this ship?” And the man kind of choked up and said, “I’m happy because I’m going back to Venezuela with my family, but I’m sad because I gave up everything for the hope of achieving the American dream.” And they had to give it up. And he also said, “We don’t know what situation Venezuela will return to.”
As many know, the economic and political situation in Venezuela is very dire, and tensions are currently rising between the United States and Venezuela due to the U.S. military’s attack on a suspected drug-trafficking ship that left Venezuela. So they had very mixed emotions because it was still a very dire situation.
Dana Taylor:
Daniel, this dramatic slowdown in migrants coming across the border is a sure win for the Trump administration. What do policy experts say about this?
Daniel Cox-Gonzalez:
There’s no question that this is a solid victory for the Trump administration, and that’s what they campaigned on, and they were able to achieve it in a very short period of time. And we’re seeing these dramatic changes even though the Trump administration has only been in office for a few months. But what policy experts say is that migrants themselves have not disappeared; they have not just disappeared; the conditions in which they fled in their countries have not changed, and in some countries, the situation has worsened. So this pressure is increasing in Latin America right now. We have to recognize, for example, that many of the migrants who left Venezuela, 8 million Venezuelans have been forced to leave their country since 2014, many of whom have never been to the United States, lived in neighboring countries of Venezuela, and now some are returning to those countries.
So what policy analysts have told me is that there is this inflationary effect happening in Latin America right now. The situation there is not changing, and migrants are waiting out the situation to find a better life, which could lead to another big surge at some point in the future.
Dana Taylor:
Daniel, you have clearly studied this issue in depth for a very long time. What long-term policies would allow either the United States or Latin American countries to address the root causes, rather than just the symptoms of immigration?
Daniel Cox-Gonzalez:
We’ve been interviewing experts working on these issues for years. What they tell us is that long-term solutions have to do with first of all addressing the root causes in the countries from which migrants are flowing. And those are very complex issues. Economic needs, jobs, opportunities, political stability, organized crime, gang violence, extortion, corruption… These are different kinds of reasons why immigrants leave their countries, and they are very, very complex problems with no short-term solutions, solutions that have to be addressed over years and decades. And if anything, what we’re seeing now is a reversal of that. Because many of these countries are receiving millions of dollars in aid from the United States that was supposed to provide them with some stability, some job opportunities, some security, but now has been eliminated and crushed by the Trump administration.
And another long-term problem, experts say, is that so many sectors of our economy rely heavily on immigrant labor sectors, such as construction, hospitality, agriculture, caregivers, and elder care…But right now, our immigration system doesn’t have clear opportunities for people who want to come and meet these labor needs. People always say, well, people can come the legal way, well, the legal way in the United States right now is you have to be a lawful permanent resident or a U.S. citizen who is in the United States and have someone to sponsor you, or you have to have an employer who can sponsor you. These are the main ways to come to the US legally. If you’re like many immigrants who come to the United States and want to come here for a chance to build a better life, in most cases those opportunities don’t exist.
Dana Taylor:
You’ve been covering the border for years, and like I said, you’ve seen multiple administrations try to address immigration issues, but how does this moment compare to changes you’ve witnessed in the past, like the caravan era or Title 42 deportations?
Daniel Cox-Gonzalez:
Different Democratic and Republican administrations have tried different solutions to address border issues, but often the primary way to address border issues is primarily through an enforcement-only lens. And it has been done by both Democrats and Republicans. For example, under the Clinton administration, we just started to see the border become more fortified under “Operation Gatekeeper” and “Operation Hold the Line.” But what we are seeing now, with border-wide effects such as a near complete cut off of access to asylum at the border, arrests and prosecutions of people crossing the border, including asylum seekers, and an aggressive posture by ICE across the country in cities like Chicago and Los Angeles, is arguably the most dramatic and hardline stance against immigration we have ever seen on this scale. And this is really just the beginning.
Under the so-called Big Beautiful Act, tens of billions of dollars will be dedicated to immigration and border enforcement over the next few years, and in reality, broader border and immigration enforcement is only just beginning, and it will also see a major expansion of ICE detention facilities that will hire thousands more Border Patrol and ICE agents and install machinery to conduct larger-scale immigration enforcement.
Dana Taylor:
Daniel Gonzalez is an immigration reporter for The Arizona Republic, a member of the USA TODAY Network. Thanks for joining us on The Excerpt, Daniel.
Daniel Cox-Gonzalez:
Thank you for having me.
Dana Taylor:
We would like to thank Senior Producer Kayley Monaghan and Executive Producer Laura Beatty for their production assistance. Let us know what you think about this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening, I’m Dana Taylor. We’ll be back tomorrow morning with another episode of USA TODAY Excerpts.
