Fear Is the New Wall

Sergio on his way back to Mexico (Courtesy: Roberto Contreras, Sregio’s brother in-law)

A few months after Donald Trump returned to the presidency, Sergio Hernández decided to abandon the life he had built over almost three decades. He sold his small house in Los Angeles, packed his belongings into the trailer of his truck, and began a long drive back to Mexico City. He had worked as a truck driver for 27 years, living quietly, sending money to his family, and raising two sons. But as immigration raids multiplied and deportations became the center of political rhetoric once again, Hernández chose to exile himself before Immigration and Customs Enforcement could come knocking on his door.

“Every time I climbed into my truck to start a route, my throat would tighten,” he recalled to Columbia News Service. “I kept thinking that La Migra could stop me at any moment. That would mean losing my house, my savings, everything I’ve worked for since I came here. You can lose your whole life in a few seconds.”

The fear Hernández describes has spread among millions of immigrants since Trump’s return to the White House. The media attention given to the ICE raids, together with the administration’s messaging, has produced a climate of terror that goes far beyond the statistics.

“Self-deport or we will arrest you and deport you,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem declared on Sept. 23. The administration also created an app that undocumented people can use to claim a plane ticket home and $1,000 if they agree to voluntarily leave the country.

Still, the spectacle of ICE raids in American cities—longtime residents dragged from their homes or picked up by masked agents—appear to have had the stated goal. The Department of Homeland Security put out a press release in late September claiming that some “an estimated 1.6 million [undocumented immigrants] have voluntarily self-deported.” (Immigration experts insist that it is too early to tell if that number is accurate.)

One statistic points to a different story. Despite the very public nature of ICE actions, actual deportations of Mexicans under the Trump administration have been considerably lower than during the terms of his predecessors, according to data from Mexico’s Ministry of Interior.

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According to Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM), between Jan. 20 and Nov. 11, a total of 137,000 Mexicans have been repatriated from the United States, a small number compared with previous administrations. During his first term (2017–2021), according to an official report from October conducted by the institute, officials under Trump deported approximately 766,000 Mexicans. In contrast, during Bill Clinton’s second term (1998–2001), nearly 4.3 million Mexicans were deported, 461% more than Trump’s first presidency. Even under President Joe Biden (2021–2024), deportations of Mexicans reached 891,000, about 16% higher than Trump’s record according to the INM.

If the current trend continues, Trump could deport as many as 151,000 Mexicans by the end of 2025 according to Mexican government official data. By comparison, former President Barack Obama, who served from 2009 to 2017, never deported fewer than 600,000 Mexicans per year. Democratic administrations have deported roughly 36% more Mexicans than Republican governments between 1989 and October 2025 according to the INM’s report (8,206,055 by the Republicans vs 11,187,687 by the Democrats).

And so, Trump may be achieving his goals of reducing illegal immigration by creating the appearance of a massive crackdown, rather than actually carrying out one.

Official Number of Repatriated Mexicans (1989-October 2025) by the Ministry of Interior.

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On Oct. 22, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, said that ICE expects to deport more than 600,000 undocumented immigrants by the end of the year.

Noem said on Sept. 23 that the number of unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. has declined by “two million illegal aliens” who have left the United States in less than 250 days, including an estimated 1.6 million who have voluntarily self-deported and more than 400,000 deportations.

These numbers reveal that more people are leaving the country willingly than actually being deported. In other words, immigrants are doing the job for Trump.

Roberto Suro, a veteran journalist, professor of journalism and public policy at the University of Southern California and founding director of the Pew Hispanic Center, has long analyzed the intersection between migration, data, and media narratives in the United States. Suro said that the numbers the Trump administration has been circulating reveals more about political performance than about actual enforcement.

“The stated figure of 1.6 million people who supposedly ‘self-deported’ isn’t data, it’s messaging,” he said. “When there’s no breakdown by agency, by region, or by how cases were processed, you’re not looking at facts, you’re looking at a show.”

For Suro, the problem is not only the inaccuracy of these claims but the deliberate use of confusion as strategy. Immigration numbers, he said, have always been complex and take months to verify, yet the Trump administration “hasn’t provided a single reliable dataset or even the bureaucratic details that normally accompany enforcement reports.” Past presidents, he added, achieved high deportation counts through cooperation with local police and the Secure Communities program (a system that allows immigration enforcement to check the immigration status of people arrested by local police), but those networks have largely dissolved due to the fact that “the big industrial cities that are run by Democrats have policies of non-cooperation. It is much harder for them to get big numbers there,” he added.

According to Suro, this approach represents an evolution of a decades-old idea known as the “attrition strategy”: making life so difficult and fearful for undocumented migrants that they choose to leave on their own. “The idea isn’t necessarily to remove everyone,” Suro said, “it’s to make removal so credible and terrifying that staying becomes the exception.”

If Trump’s first administration focused on building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, the second has emphasized going after undocumented people already in the United States.

Within his first 100 days in office, Trump signed several executive orders that restricted access to asylum at the southern border, suspended humanitarian protection programs, and allowed deportations without full hearings, according to the American Immigration Council. At the same time, ICE operations intensified inside so-called sanctuary cities, targeting migrants at courthouses, workplaces, and even schools.

On Inauguration Day, the White House issued “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” an order directing the government to “faithfully execute” immigration laws with an explicit public safety framing. Within days, DHS followed with guidance, enabling components to pause or end parole programs to accelerate removals.

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On their way back to Mexico, Hernández and his wife, Vania, a Guatemalan immigrant he met years earlier in California, drove south through Arizona and Sonora. Each curve of the road made the boxes inside the trailer shift and bump. Those boxes were filled with their past: family photos, worn out clothes, furniture, and hundreds of memories of the life they decided to leave behind. Even after crossing the border, Hernández could not shake the feeling that he had left behind the most important part of himself, his sons, Javier, and Gustavo, both undocumented young men who had chosen to stay in Los Angeles.

Although the brothers are “Dreamers” protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, they live cautiously. They avoid staying out late, refrain from attending crowded public events like concerts or sports games and keep a low profile on social media. They rarely post about politics and have created a close network of mutual support with other migrants in case one of them is detained.

They have also adopted routines that illustrate how fear shapes daily life. “We share our location when we go out, to work or even to buy groceries,” Javier said. “We try not to speak Spanish in public, and we stopped using social media apps like WhatsApp, X, or Facebook. Anything could be used against us.”

Months have passed since Hernández’s departure, but the uncertainty remains for those who stayed behind. “These last few months have shown us that this administration does not want us here,” Javier said. “We are defenseless, and we only have each other to rely on. I am glad my parents left before all this got worse because it is not dignified to live in fear every day. You start suspecting every white van, every person staring too long. That kind of paranoia has made some of my friends think about leaving the country for good.”

Back in Mexico, the government has tried to provide limited support through a program called “México te Abraza” (Mexico Embraces You), created in early 2025 to assist nationals who were deported or who returned voluntarily. Arturo Medina, undersecretary for human rights at Mexico’s Interior Ministry, said that a “considerable percentage” of those enrolled in the program reported returning by choice rather than through formal deportation.

“We have received a significant number of cases of people who said they came back out of fear,” Medina said. “They did not want to be deported and preferred to return on their own. They are afraid to go out, who have stopped working, who no longer go to the movies or to the park. These are measures that deeply affect the quality of life of those living in the United States. And we must remember that this is a country founded, built, and sustained by migrants.”

As Sergio now rebuilds his life in Mexico City, he says he feels free yet incomplete. “Sometimes I wake up and forget I’m back,” he said during a phone call. “Then I remember everything we left behind. Freedom feels strange when it comes from fear.”