Thousands of migrants hoping to make it into the United States have turned around since President Donald Trump returned to office and began instituting harsher border policies, The Associated Press reported Tuesday.
Over 14,000 U.S.-bound migrants — most of whom were Venezuelan nationals — revered course and returned southward since Trump began cracking down on illegal immigration and bolstered the U.S.-Mexico border, according to a report published by the governments of Panama, Colombia and Costa Rica and reviewed by the AP. The report, which was backed by the United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights, found that north-bound migration plummeted 97% in 2025.
The findings follow Trump’s dismantling of several Biden-era policies that facilitated mass immigration into the U.S., such as the now-defunct CBP One app which allowed foreign nationals to apply for asylum appointments at the border. The administration has also hastened the end of the Biden-era CHNV program, which flew in hundreds of thousands of migrants, including Venezuelan nationals, into the U.S.
The majority of the returning migrants are headed back to their home countries, according to data from the UN-backed report. Fifty-one percent are returning to Venezuela, which has served as a major source of illegal immigration into the U.S., and another 26% are returning to Colombia.
The new figures mark an incredible turnaround in the U.S. illegal immigration crisis, which peaked to unprecedented levels during President Joe Biden’s White House tenure. There were roughly 8.5 million migrant encounters along the U.S.-Mexico border during the four fiscal years of the Biden administration, according to Customs and Border Protection data.
More than half a million migrants crossed the Darien Gap — a dense jungle region between Colombia and Panama popularly used by U.S.-bound illegal migrants — at the height of the migrant crisis in 2023. Passage across the Darien Gap has since plummeted well over 90%, with a total of just 2,159 illegal migrant crossings in January 2025 compared to the 34,839 crossings tallied in January 2024.
These changes began after Trump got to work on a number of initiatives aimed at reducing illegal immigration and tightening border security.
On his first day back in the Oval Office, the Republican president signed a flurry of executive orders, such as a national emergency declaration allowing him to divert more military resources to the U.S.-Mexico border and resuming wall construction, a designation of drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, a pause on refugee admissions and an end to birthright citizenship for individuals born on U.S. soil to illegal migrant parents.
Trump also successfully coerced both the Mexican and Canadian governments to do more to bolster border security, including a commitment of 10,000 national guard troops by leftist Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to help stop the flow of illegal immigration and illicit drugs.
Locals in Panama — a tiny Central American country which became a major stepping stone for the endless number of migrants hoping to get into the U.S. — said they’ve noticed the changes.
“I would say that people are less inclined to go through the Darien when they know very well that they’re going to end up shipped back home,” Allan Baitel, a Panamanian citizen, previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation about the evolving situation. “So the carrot has disappeared, and there’s no reason for them to head north.”
The reverse flow has resulted in historically low levels of activity along the southern border. In August, the Trump administration celebrated the release of zero migrants at the border for the third month in a row.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the DCNF.
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