Mexico disperses migrant caravans heading to US ahead of Trump inauguration

Faced with the prospect of massive tariffs on goods under the new administration, Mexico has been dispersing migrants throughout the country to keep them far from the U.S. border, including dropping them off at the once vibrant tourist hotspot of Acapulco, a beach resort town on Mexico's Pacific coast made famous by the jet set in the 1950s and '60s.

Once a crown jewel of Mexico's tourism industry, the city now suffers under the thumb of organized crime and is still struggling to climb back after taking a direct hit from powerful Hurricane Otis in 2023. It now has one of Mexico's highest rates of homicides.

Yet authorities are dropping busloads of migrants there with little support and few options. 

The Mexican government has embraced a policy of "dispersion and exhaustion" to reduce the number of migrants reaching the U.S. border. Authorities let migrants walk for days until they're exhausted and then offer to bus them to various cities where they say their immigration status will be reviewed.

The migrants tell The Associated Press that they accepted an offer from immigration officials to come to the city under the premise that they could continue their journey north toward the U.S. border, but instead they have essentially been abandoned there. 

On Monday, desperate migrants could be seen sleeping in the streets in tents and say they fear Mexico's drug cartels could target them for kidnapping and extortion, though many migrants say authorities extort them, too.

"Immigration (officials) told us they were going to give us a permit to transit the country freely for 10, 15 days and it wasn't like that," 28-year-old Venezuelan Ender Antonio Castañeda told The Associated Press. "They left us dumped here without any way to get out. They won't sell us (bus) tickets. They won't sell us anything."

Additionally, Trump has also pledged to end the use of parole programs by the Biden administration that allow migrants to enter via the expanded "lawful pathways."

On Tuesday, Trump reiterated his threat in a press briefing where he also said he would change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.