MEXICO CITY — Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election instantly changed the calculus for millions of migrants or potential migrants around the world.

But maybe not in the way Trump imagined.

Trump has pledged to cut immigration. But by reducing already limited legal routes to the United States, migrants will simply recalibrate their plans and resort to hiring smugglers in greater numbers, experts say.

In many cases, this will mean turning to organized crime groups who increasingly profit from migrant smuggling.

Those potentially affected come from dozens of countries and many have already sold their homes and belongings to finance the trip.

Venezuelans continue to arrive at the U.S. southern border in small, but still significant, numbers. Mexicans made up half of U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions in September. The Chinese cross the Equator and cross the Americas. Senegalese buy multi-stop flights to Nicaragua, then head north.

The UN’s International Organization for Migration estimates that there are approximately 281 million international migrants worldwide, or 3.6% of the world’s population. An increasing number of people will be displaced for political, economic and violence-related reasons, and more migrants will seek asylum, according to its annual report. He warns that when people can’t find regular routes, they start looking for “extremely dangerous irregular routes.”

Under the first Trump administration, Mexican border towns were saturated with migrants. The cartels preyed on them, kidnapping them, extorting ransoms from their families and forcibly recruiting them into their ranks. There were hundreds of arrivals each day, as well as thousands of people who had to wait out the U.S. asylum process in Mexico, which could last years.

A US program called CBP One has brought some order after it was introduced by the Biden administration in early 2023. Migrants no longer need to appear at the border to make an appointment and can do so on their smartphone. Once overwhelmed, border shelters have emptied and many families are doing everything they can to take the legal route.

Trump pledged to end CBP One. He also wants to restrict refugee resettlement again and has warned throughout his campaign against mass expulsions.

Although his victory was deflating and worrying for those en route to the United States, it was not a decisive factor.

On Tuesday evening, Bárbara Rodríguez, a 33-year-old Venezuelan, should have been sleeping after walking more than 12 kilometers in the tropical heat of southern Mexico with some 2,500 others from at least a dozen countries.

Instead, she was watching the US election results on her cell phone.

Back in Caracas, Rodríguez helped monitor an opposition polling station during Venezuela’s July elections. After President Nicolas Maduro claimed re-election, his supporters began harassing his family.

“Either my family’s lives were going to be in danger or I had to leave the country,” she said. In September, she sold her house and left her three children with her mother.

Now his plan to wait for an appointment with CBP One to apply for asylum at the U.S. border has an expiration date.

“Plans have changed. We have until January 20,” she said, referring to Inauguration Day. She did not rule out hiring a smuggler, she added.

Martha Bárcena, former U.S. ambassador to Mexico during most of the first Trump administration, said migrants were the losers of his immigration policies and that it could happen again.

“Organized crime is the biggest beneficiary, as revenues from illegal human trafficking are already equal to, if not greater than, drug revenues,” she said.

Estefanía Ramos, from Guatemala, woke up worried Wednesday at a shelter in Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas.

“We’re trying to figure out what’s going to happen to us,” the 19-year-old said. “That wasn’t the plan.”

She and her husband left Guatemala after a gang threatened to harm and kidnap her, she said. They have been waiting three months for an appointment with CBP One. Two months ago, they had a baby girl.

“If we can continue to wait for an appointment, we will,” Ramos said, adding that she did not want to risk an illegal crossing with the baby.

On Wednesday in Ciudad Juarez, a few dozen asylum seekers with appointments waited patiently to be called to cross the international bridge.

Gretchen Kuhner, director of IMUMI, a nongovernmental legal services organization in Mexico, was in the southern Mexican town of Tuxtla Gutierrez last week, where she found migrant families with young children living in the street and waiting for an appointment with CBP One.

“They charge their cell phones every day in a makeshift spot on the street so they can check their CBP One appointments… while they breastfeed and sleep in a tent without water,” she said.

“People who need protection are really trying to do it the right way.”

New restrictions on an already difficult process would leave vulnerable populations with few options, said Mark Hetfield, CEO of the U.S. refugee support organization HIAS.

“That would mean they have nowhere to go, because there are so many countries in the hemisphere where there is effectively no asylum system or where even if you can get asylum, you don’t get asylum. “You’re not necessarily safe,” he said.

And then there is the specter of mass deportations. Trump has made a similar threat before and failed to deliver on his promises, but there is real concern.

Expulsions to countries like Cuba and Venezuela could be complicated by frosty relations, although Venezuela’s Maduro issued a conciliatory message Wednesday congratulating Trump. Haiti’s advocates on Thursday called on countries, including the United States, to suspend expulsions due to the country’s domestic crisis.

And no country will be more affected than Mexico. There are approximately 11 million Mexicans living in the United States, including approximately 5 million without legal status. Mexicans sent more than $63 billion in money last year, mostly from the United States. Mass deportations would shake the finances of millions of families and the Mexican economy would struggle to absorb them.

Migrant advocates and shelter directors in Mexico said they had not heard of any government plans to handle large numbers of deportees.

Mexican humanitarian groups “are not able to accommodate as many people and, let’s be honest, it is civil society that carries the bulk of the humanitarian response to those who are expelled or in transit,” he said. said Rafael Velásquez García, director of Mexico. for the International Rescue Committee.

Mexico needs to prepare for all kinds of pressure from the Trump administration, said Carlos Pérez Ricart, a professor of international relations at Mexico’s state research center CIDE.

“What Mexico must accept is that our country will be a welcoming country for migrants, whether they like it or not,” he said. “Trump is going to deport thousands, if not millions, of people and he is going to hinder the flow of migrants.”