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NOGALES, Sonora — Mexican national and asylum seeker Tania, 24, knew something was wrong when she saw her husband Edwin’s face, as he stood in the courtyard of the Nogales migrant shelter that’s been their home for nearly a year.

“I don’t know how to tell you this,” she recalled him saying on Monday, Jan. 20. It was minutes after the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump. It was also nine days before the couple’s long-awaited Jan. 29 appointment at the DeConcini Port of Entry, secured through the “CBP One” phone application, when the couple and their two daughters would finally be allowed to enter the U.S. to seek asylum protection.

At the Casa de la Misericordia shelter, Tania and Edwin had checked the CBP One app on their phone every day for 11 months, trying to get an appointment through the app’s lottery system. In early January, they were overjoyed to finally secure one for later this month, said Tania, who asked the ����ֱ�� to only use her first name because her family had fled violence and threats from criminals in their home state of Guerrero.

But there in the courtyard, his face stricken as a group of women cried nearby, Edwin told her he’d just learned their appointment had been canceled following an announcement from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, newly under Trump’s control.

Tania, who is six months pregnant, was flooded with grief and anger, she said, speaking in Spanish outside her room at the shelter on Wednesday.

“We all started to cry,” she said, her eyes welling with tears. Even though the long wait for the appointment had been difficult, “before we had hope. I have another baby on the way, and we don’t know what’s going to happen now. We have nothing. We sold our things to come here. Where can we go?”

The family is among the more than a quarter-million asylum seekers in Mexico who had been seeking an appointment through the CBP One app, which the Biden administration said was the only way for most asylum seekers to access protection in the U.S. It was part of the administration’s “carrot-and-stick” strategy to reduce irregular crossings outside official ports of entry.

After Trump took office on Jan. 20, CBP immediately shut down the app and canceled about 30,000 existing appointments, even those scheduled for that afternoon.

The abrupt cancelation was a shock for asylum seekers who had sought to follow U.S. protocol and waited months to request asylum “the right way,” often spending down their life savings in the process, advocates say.

“The folks who were in the line were trying to follow the process that was set forth for them,” said Laura Belous, managing attorney for the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project. In previous presidential transitions, “even if there were differences in policy, usually folks would honor those who had been in line and allow them that opportunity. For this (Trump) administration, this was certainly not their priority.”

Christina Asencio, the ����ֱ��-based director of research and analysis for refugee protection with Human Rights First, said Trump’s move to restrict legal pathways to the U.S. will only heighten chaos at the border and endangers vulnerable people with nowhere else to turn.

“This shuts the door on people fleeing persecution in need of humanitarian protection and runs counter to all of our ideals and values as a country,” she said. “We can expect to see hundreds of thousands of people who are now stranded without an avenue to exercise their right to seek asylum protection at our border.”

Out of desperation, more will try their luck making the dangerous crossing into the U.S. through the desert, she said.

“When you block that access (at official ports), you force people to cross between ports of entry,” she said.

On Thursday, the Trump administration indicated it also intends to go after asylum seekers already admitted to the U.S. through CBP One, the New York Times , citing an internal Department of Homeland Security to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, empowering the agency to rapidly deport people who entered the U.S. through formerly authorized Biden-era programs.

That appears to include CBP One, and a humanitarian parole program for people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. About 1.4 million people have entered the country through those programs, the Times reported.

‘Worst part is uncertainty’

As word spread throughout Casa de la Misericordia shelter about the now-closed app and the canceled appointments on Jan. 20, the atmosphere darkened and there was silence except for the sound of crying, recalled shelter director Alma Angélica Macías Mejía, speaking in Spanish to the Star at the shelter, which sits on a hill overlooking a residential Nogales neighborhood.

“It was as if we were in a funeral procession,” she said, “as if we were going to bury someone, as if they were going to bury themselves.”

Casa de la Misericordia, or House of Mercy, is the only shelter in Nogales, Sonora that allowed asylum seekers to stay long-term as they waited for CBP One appointments. Most other shelters can only house their guests for three to 10 days, Macías Mejía said.

Its residents have usually been referred by other shelters or aid groups as particularly vulnerable, like single mothers and families with children.

On inauguration day, most ended up gathering around an outdoor oven near the shelter’s cafeteria to be together in their grief, Macías Mejía said. She asked everyone to share a phrase that gave them hope, and tried to focus on the possibility that legal challenges in the U.S. could provide relief.

“The hope is that the humanitarian and legal organizations in the United States can make an impact,” Macías Mejía said. “Asylum is a right no one in the world can take away. It’s like taking away my right to eat, without cause, without reason.”

Asylum seeker Veronica, 43, told the Star she’d been optimistic about securing a CBP One appointment soon, after nearly a year of trying while staying at Casa de la Misericordia. She said her disabled eldest son, who is 23 and lives in Oklahoma, is getting a high-risk surgery in late January, and she was hopeful she could be with him if her CBP One appointment arrived soon.

With CBP One’s cancelation, Veronica said she feels completely powerless, worried not only for the health of her son in the U.S., but for the safety of her 16-year-old son, who is with her at the shelter. The teenager was threatened by an organized criminal faction in their home state of Guanajuato, in central Mexico, prompting them to flee to the border last year, she said.

“The worst part is the uncertainty, not knowing what’s going to happen,” she said. “We left our house, we left our life. Returning to Guanajuato is not an option for us. It would be as if I handed over my youngest son” to be killed.

Trump’s cancellation of CBP One has already prompted a legal , led by the American Civil Liberties Union, through an existing lawsuit filed against Biden’s “circumvention of lawful pathways“ rule, which in May 2023 made it mandatory to use CBP One before requesting asylum.

Advocates say that rule and other Biden-era reforms violated the right to request asylum once on U.S. soil, which is legal under and international law, regardless of how one entered the country, said Belous of the Florence Project. Trump’s executive orders go even further to shut down access to asylum and humanitarian parole.

“The U.S. is a signatory to international conventions that guarantee the right to apply for asylum for folks who are in U.S. We also have it as part of our own federal statutes,” Belous said. “These executive orders directly interfere with that right of people to apply for asylum and our obligation to give people that right.”

Tania said her daughters, Alexa, 6, and Bryany, 4, have been feeling the effects of living long-term in a shelter for a while now. Although at Casa de la Misericordia they have food, community, an on-site school and playgrounds, the girls know it’s not home, she said. Months ago, her eldest, Alexa, began asking when their CBP One appointment would arrive.

“She would cry when others would get their appointments and ask, ‘When are we going home?’” Tania said. “We didn’t know what to tell her. We said, ‘We just have to endure it and wait.’”

Smugglers benefit from shutdown

The Biden administration focused on policies to channel asylum seekers to legal ports of entry, where entries are strictly limited for those without an appointment. It also heightened consequences for migrants who entered the country outside the ports of entry in order to surrender to border agents, which happened in record numbers in late 2023.

“Scheduling appointments makes the process safer and more orderly, and the advance information that is submitted to CBP officers creates a more efficient and streamlined process for CBP and for individuals,” according to a Biden-era CBP fact sheet.

Over the last two years, more than 900,000 asylum seekers have used CBP One to enter the U.S. at official ports, CBP said. By late 2024, Border Patrol encounters with migrants outside official ports had plummeted by more than 70% compared to late 2023, reaching levels lower than at the end of Trump’s first administration, in part due to the expansions of legal pathways into the U.S., experts say.

In the last two months of 2024, migrant encounters at official ports of entry — where those with CBP One appointments go — outpaced encounters with border agents between the ports, CBP data show.

But Trump, in his ““ executive order, sought to end programs like CBP One which he called an illegal expansion of parole in the U.S.

“One of my most important obligations is to protect the American people from the disastrous effects of unlawful mass migration and resettlement,” Trump’s executive order states. “My Administration will marshal all available resources and authorities to stop this unprecedented flood of illegal aliens into the United States.”

When legal pathways to immigrate are restricted, it’s criminal organizations and human smugglers that profit, as seen during Title 42 and under the Remain in Mexico policy that forced asylum seekers to wait for their immigration hearings in Mexico, said Asencio of advocacy group Human Rights First.

Asencio authored a report last year, “,” based on interviews with 500 asylum seekers who were waiting for CBP One appointments, often in dangerous conditions, south of the U.S. border. The report found rampant cases of kidnappings, torture, sexual assault and extortion of migrants, who were easy prey for criminals and Mexican authorities alike, the report said.

“There is significant research on this, how this is only going to benefit cartels who will continue to profit off the lives of people,” she said. “Babies, kids and adults have a price tag when they’re kidnapped for ransom.”

Another of Trump’s executive orders declares a national emergency due to the “invasion” at the southern border. Asencio calls that a gross mischaracterization and a “dangerous weaponization of constitutional powers against vulnerable people seeking asylum protection.”

“I welcome anyone to go down to the southern border on the U.S. side or Mexican side and see who you’ll meet there,” she said. “These are families with babies and pregnant women and kids who have been subjected to horrific harms by being stranded in Mexico, and are now being denied access to legal protections they’re entitled to under U.S. law and international law.”

‘Mexico Embraces You’

As access to protection in the U.S. shuts down, and as the Trump administration moves to surge deportations, additional shelter space is needed in Nogales, Sonora, said Marcos Moreno Báez, Mexican consul in Nogales, ����ֱ��.

The consulate has been helping facilitate communications between the local government and a coalition of Nogales, Sonora, shelters, as work gets underway to convert a sports facility into a shelter that can house 3,000 more people. That’s in addition to the current shelter capacity of about 1,100, he said.

Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum also recently announced 35,000 private-sector jobs available for Mexican nationals deported from the U.S., he said.

The Mexican government is embracing a strategy of welcome through its new program “Mexico Te Abraza,” or “Mexico Embraces You,” in anticipation of mass deportations, he said. The program will also help migrants from outside Mexico who find themselves stuck south of the U.S. border, he said.

“Frankly that’s an added value for our economy. This is how Mexico is shifting towards a more open type of policy, so we can not only receive our people (Mexican nationals) here in Mexico, but really to take advantage of their skills and to keep our economy growing,” Moreno Báez said. “We are working for not only a safe, orderly immigration, but humane type of immigration to dignify migrants,” including those from outside Mexico.

Having additional shelter space available is an important step, but finding sufficient staffing and other resources for that space is still a big challenge, said Joanna Williams, executive director of Kino Border Initiative, a binational migrant-aid nonprofit with a shelter in Nogales, Sonora. Non-Mexican migrants will also need avenues to regularize their status, she said.

Back at Casa de la Misericordia, asylum seekers are trying to figure out next steps, but many are overwhelmed and depressed, said psychologist Emilio Cid. He provides support to the shelter’s residents, who he says have often experienced traumas in their home countries, as well as on their journeys to the border.

With CBP One’s cancelation, “they’re in a constant state of mourning and trying to process these emotions,” especially the sense of not having control over one’s own life and safety, he said on Wednesday at Casa de la Misericordia.

The day before, Cid had organized an art therapy session for a group of women at the shelter, and on Wednesday, he was about to meet with a group of adolescents to help them sort out their feelings, he said.

“They can’t be in control of this situation,” he said, “but we have more control over our reaction to it.”

Some at the shelter now wonder if they made a mistake in not entering the U.S. irregularly, through the desert, instead of waiting months to follow CBP One’s requirements, Cid said. But if given the choice, “they always say, ‘I want to do the correct legal procedure, so as not to have complications in the United States,’” Cid said. The reversal on CBP One is “very painful,” he said.

“They feel like, ‘I have to do things correctly, when they (U.S. authorities) don’t do things correctly to me,’” he said.

Asylum seeker Veronica said she’s been running the kitchen at Casa de la Misericordia since she arrived last year. While she has no idea what her next step will be, she says she’s grateful for the stability she and her youngest son have found at the shelter.

“I thank God for being in a place like this, because otherwise we would be on the street,” she said.

Macías Mejía said she’s still hopeful that compassion will prevail in the U.S. and that CBP One’s cancelation might be reversed.

In the meantime, for those waiting in Mexico, “our doors are always open. They can be here for the time they need and feel safe here.”