This town was built on migrants’ cash. Now it fears Trump’s deportations. | President-elect Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan could upend life in Mexican villages that depend on remittances from relatives in the United States.

The Washington Post ^ | January 5, 2025 6:30 a.m. EST | Mary Beth Sheridan

[E. Pluribus Unum]

FRANCISCO VILLA, Mexico — Over the past 30 years, this corn-growing hamlet in central Mexico emptied out. Around half the 3,000 residents moved to the United States. As the migrants went north, the dollars flowed south.

They were construction workers and gardeners, cooks and nannies. They became the saviors of this village of tiny adobe homes. They helped establish the town’s first high school. Their donations paved the dirt streets. They bought computers for the classrooms. “The kids had no idea what they were,” recalled one of the town’s migrant benefactors, Rubén Chávez.

Now, a current of fear is running through a village tethered to Illinois, California and Oregon by the flow of remittances. President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to carry out “the largest deportation operation in American history” — taking aim at more than 11 million people living illegally in the United States. Nearly half are Mexican.

Trump “is coming in with full force,” Chávez told a meeting in the village hall on a recent afternoon. He looked around at men he’d grown up with, suntanned workers in baseball caps, who’d returned from the United States for the holidays. Many were now legal U.S. residents. But their neighbors and cousins weren’t. “What will we do?” he asked. “How can we react as a community?”

Trump built his campaign on restricting immigration, arguing that the border was out of control. Many Americans agreed. After all, illegal crossings shot to record levels under President Joe Biden, averaging 2 million a year in his first three years in office, before falling dramatically. Even big cities felt overwhelmed.

But over decades, an entire ecosystem has developed around irregular migrants from Mexico and other countries. They’ve not only become critical to sectors of the...

[Degaston]

Stop all remittances to countries where people are caught falsely claiming to be war refugees when they illegally cross into the USA from that country. These countries should know who is leaving their country to go to the USA. If they choose to turn a blind eye to the crimes then we should shut down remittances and direct travel into the USA from those countries until they fix their problem.

[shoff]

This town was built on public assistance fraud. Now it fears Trump’s deportations. | President-elect Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan could upend life in Mexican villages that depend on fraud from relatives in the United States.Town elders wonder if now the town will have to depend on honest labor.

[central_va]

DONT.GIVE.A.FECAL.MATTER.

[The Great RJ]

I’m in favor of imposing a 75% federal excise tax on private money transfers to Mexico and other countries sending us their dregs.