The United Nations’ refugee agency plans to shutter four offices in Mexico following foreign aid cuts by the United States, a U.N. official told Reuters in April. The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has frozen funding for all nonessential international assistance programs, including a number of humanitarian and social assistance initiatives across Latin America. How might the scaling back of refugee assistance programs in Mexico affect the conditions of migrants traveling through the country? Now, more than four months into Trump’s second presidency, how has the freeze in U.S. humanitarian assistance funding affected Latin America?
Erin B. Corcoran, executive director at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and associate teaching professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs: “Closing four U.N. refugee offices in Mexico will have devastating consequences for individuals fleeing persecution and harm in the region. The U.N. refugee agency’s primary mission is to work with host and transit countries to ensure legal protection for refugees. The agency has made significant progress with the Mexican government to strengthen its capacity to receive asylum seekers, including assisting civil society organizations that provide legal services. They also work closely with the Catholic Church to offer basic humanitarian assistance, including food, shelter and basic medical care. Through these programs, individuals have secured stable housing and gainful employment, demonstrating the effectiveness of local integration. Without these services, refugees and migrants’ lives and livelihoods are at risk. The region is experiencing unprecedented violence and food insecurity, with 27.3 million people in need this year. Until the root causes of the flight are addressed in the region, individuals will continue to embark on dangerous journeys in search of safety and protection. The Trump administration’s decision to eliminate funding for crucial programs that address the root causes of gang violence, sexual violence, extreme poverty, climate change and political volatility is incredibly short-sighted and will only create more instability and more irregular migration in the region. What is needed in the region are community-based programs that foster the rule of law, provide economic and educational opportunities, cultivate innovation and address environmental stressors caused by climate change. Investments in the region will not only save lives, but will also afford security and stability for Latin America and the United States.”
Max Primorac, senior research fellow in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation: “With this decision, President Trump is securing our borders, blocking the flow of China-driven fentanyl into our country and protecting American communities overwhelmed by soaring welfare costs and criminal violence. Sharing the globalist left’s vision of a ‘right to migrate,’ U.N. agencies were openly complicit in former President Biden’s open-door policies, providing migrants with instructions and resources on how to successfully violate our border security laws and enter the United States illegally. Opening travel assistance offices and funding NGOs was part of the previous administration’s ‘root causes’ strategy, a failed foreign aid response that enriched politically connected NGOs, wasted billions of dollars of taxpayer money, promoted woke ideologies to the detriment of America’s global image and sustained socialist economic policies that are the actual root causes of corruption and poverty in the region. Worse, the United Nations and other international organizations advance green energy programs that discourage Latin America from developing their massive fossil fuel reserves—a source of cheap and clean energy. This increases their energy reliance on Communist China and increases the costs of energy, which hits the poor hardest. The administration is following the aid approaches that Europe began to undertake last year, cutting wasteful spending while transitioning from grants-based international welfare programs that deepen poverty toward promoting more trade and investment, the cornerstones of wealth creation. By closing down these U.N nodes of destabilization and facilitators of illegal migration in Mexico, President Trump is keeping his promises to the American people and opening new opportunities for Latin America to prosper from closer commercial relations with the United States.”
Michael Paarlberg, associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and associate professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University: “Today, Mexico is one of the top 10 countries for asylum seekers in the world. As in the United States, most are from Central America, the Caribbean and Venezuela. Given the decade-long political-economic deterioration of Venezuela, which has produced the largest refugee crisis in the world, and the more recent rapid collapses of Haiti and Cuba, the work of UNHCR, alongside Mexico’s refugee agency, COMAR, is more critical than ever. Thus, the closing of UNHCR’s Mexico offices, brought on by foreign assistance cuts by the Trump administration, is tragic and especially poorly timed. It is also counterproductive to the administration’s stated goals. The United States has long sought to enlist Mexico’s help in stemming migration flows to the United States, paying to outsource border enforcement south of the U.S. border; Mexico’s National Guard was effectively a joint creation of former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Trump. Now, with fewer resources to resettle asylees in Mexico and a growing backlog of applicants, more people will seek to try their luck up north. Trump will seek to use an enforcement-only approach to keep would-be migrants out. But a more holistic approach, including funding refugee resettlement in Mexico and other countries, would be more effective in finding safe havens for individuals before they reach the border.”
Ana Canedo, assistant professor in the Department of Demography and Population Studies at the University of Montreal: “Just three months after the Trump administration canceled all CBP One appointments, and as Mexico, already among the top 10 countries for asylum claims, saw a record surge in applications in 2024, thousands of asylum seekers across the country will be once again left in limbo. This time, the blow comes from deep cuts to U.S. overseas aid: UNHCR’s operations in Mexico have lost 60 percent of their budget. The agency, which provides legal counsel, shelter, integration programs and vulnerability screening, is now closing four out of 12 offices, including three on Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala, a region marked by danger and heavy migrant transit. These closures directly undermine Mexico’s already overburdened asylum infrastructure, pushing more migrants into overcrowded shelters or onto riskier routes in search of assistance. The funding freeze has also weakened support for civil society-run shelters, compounding pressure on Mexico’s refugee system. What’s unseen is far from undone. The strain on the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance and other agencies is growing, as they are left to manage a crisis that is only intensifying—one that, if ignored, risks triggering greater instability and future displacement. Migration flows are unlikely to decline in the short term, as violence, political instability and structural poverty in most sending countries persist. Meanwhile, deported Mexicans continue to struggle with reintegration, while forcibly displaced individuals face both precarity and threats from organized crime. Trump’s policies reverberate well beyond U.S. borders; the humanitarian fallout is immediate, measurable and deeply destabilizing.”
Vladimir Cortés Roshdestvensky, director of campaigns and partnerships for Latin America at Digital Action: “The freeze on U.S. humanitarian and human rights funding has had a devastating impact. It hasn’t just eliminated jobs—it has dismantled the infrastructure needed to defend human rights and deliver lifesaving support across the region. In many cases, civil society organizations have been left without staff to keep their doors open. Entire operations have collapsed. In Mexico and beyond, the demand for humanitarian support remains urgent. People continue to flee violence, authoritarian regimes and economic hardship. And yet, just as needs escalate, resources are being stripped away. Defunding civil society and international agencies doesn’t just reduce aid—it deepens the crisis and leaves migrants increasingly exposed. Children and adolescents are among the most vulnerable. Without sustained support, the systems meant to protect them weaken, and the risks they face multiply. When these organizations disappear, so do the safeguards. We see more human rights violations, more abuse and less accountability. International and civil society organizations do more than provide aid—they serve as watchdogs, documenting abuses and pressuring authorities to uphold protections. Scaling back their presence removes a critical layer of oversight and invites impunity. This isn’t just a funding issue, it’s a protection issue. Without these actors on the ground, migrants are left unprotected in the face of violence, surveillance and neglect. The United States is accustomed to thinking of Mexico as a migrant-sending country, but this is an incomplete picture, at best. The overall migration rate in Mexico is net-negative, but barely: negative 0.8 per 1,000 people. In some years following the global financial crisis, migration has been net positive. This is because nearly as many people immigrate to Mexico as emigrate from the country, including many refugees and asylum seekers.”
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