By MARÍA VERZA, FERNANDA PESCE and CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN

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

But maybe not in the way Trump imagined.

Trump has committed to reducing 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 criminal 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 on the southern border of the United States, in small but nonetheless significant numbers. Mexicans accounted for half of U.S. Border Patrol arrests in September. The Chinese pass through Ecuador and go up the Americas. Senegalese buy multi-stop flights to Nicaraguathen move 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 again restrict refugee resettlement and warned throughout his campaign against mass deportations.

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 claims re-electionhis supporters began to harass 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 has not ruled 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.