NOGALES, AZ — Each day at the DeConcini Port of Entry in Nogales, government buses park in one of the lanes heading to Mexico. The doors open, and the latest round of deportees get off.
With their bags and documents in hand, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents watch as they walk into Mexico and are received there by government workers and the Red Cross.
It’s a stark difference from 2023, when the same buses released hundreds of migrants into the streets in Nogales each day, from countries all over the world. At the time, border encounters were at all time highs and the Biden administration allowed many to remain in the United States while awaiting asylum hearings.
Now, the daily deportations are just one way thousands are being impacted by the stricter immigration policies the Trump Administration has implemented over the last year.
On the other side of the border is Nogales, Sonora, a bustling community of more than 200,000 people. Each day, some of the people who were deported decide to stay in shelters less than a mile from the U.S.
“We make the best of it, the best that we can you know,” said Alma Gonzalez, who says she was brought to the United States when she was just six months old and has now been deported to Mexico.
She’s now trying to figure out life there as an adult after only ever living in America.
“Like for Christmas what are we going to do? Nothing? We don’t have our families,” Gonzalez said.
Another man staying in the same Nogales shelter is Ignacio Garvan, said he was deported in May and is also separated from his son in Arizona.
Garvan said he was working in Tucson at various construction sites, and that this also wasn’t his first deportation.
He plans to attempt the dangerous journey back again.
“It will take about three or four days to walk from here in Mexico, and you have to cross the border out in the mountains,” Garvan said. “You have to bring a lot of water, like three or four gallons, and it is very heavy.”
Not every person in the Nogales shelters is there because they were deported. Many are still hoping to enter the U.S. legally through an asylum appointment at the port of entry.
A lot of families are staying at Casa de la Misericordia, run by Sister Lika Macias, who recently threw a Christmas posada for the children staying there.
“I want to be able to give them the dignity of life, the right of life,” Macias said.
That dignity is what Fani Ismedi says she’s fighting for, for herself and her son, Kevin, who lost his leg in an accident during their journey north.
Ismedi said smugglers forced them to ride on top of a Mexican freight train to reach the border, and that’s where the injury happened.
“A woman went to grab on to the side of the train, but she grabbed my boy,” Ismedi said. “And she pulled him, and the only thing I heard was my son screaming.”
Kevin barely survived and now walks by using a crutch and a prosthetic leg. His injury happened in December of 2024, and by the time he and his mom reached Nogales, the immigration landscape had shifted again.
Once President Trump took office again, all asylum appointments through the CBP One app had been canceled. The administration has since re-named the app “CBP Home” and is offering money to people in the U.S. to self-deport.
“I haven’t lost hope or faith that we will get through this,” Ismedi said. “I hope we can reach the destination we want, because it’s a debt I feel like I owe my son.”
There is also uncertainty for migrants on the U.S. side of the border. Following a deadly shooting in Washington, D.C., allegedly perpetrated by an Afghan national, the Trump administration announced a pause affecting pending asylum claims, creating new questions for families already in limbo.
