Just steps from the El Chaparral port of entry, a small, weathered booth sits in the dust — no bigger than a parking attendant’s shelter.
Once a hub of activity, it buzzed with newly deported migrants making frantic phone calls, asking questions and searching for their next move, said Hollie Webb, a supervising attorney for the Border Rights Project of Al Otro Lado — the humanitarian organization that operates the site.
Now, it's silent.
The windows are smudged and empty, revealing no one inside. Jutting out of the wall, a round sign reads “Deportee Welcome Center.” But today, there are no deportees — not inside, and not in the numbers some expected to find in Tijuana.
This quiet contrasts Donald Trump’s rhetoric.Since returning to office, he’s issued more than a dozen executive orders "to deport criminal alients.”
Only one shelter in Tijuana is specifically designated for deportees, but it’s not at full capacity, Judith Cabrera, co-director of the Borderline Crisis Center — a community center that offers shelter and services for migrant, transient and deported communities — said.
While ICE has arrested over 627 percent more individuals than the Biden administration did in its entirety, actual deportations are lower than during the previous administration. What’s growing, Cabrera said, isn’t the number of people sent deported across the border — it’s the spectacle.
“It’s all for show,” she said.
In the days following Trump’s inauguration, photojournalist Guillermo Arias said he and media colleagues waited multiple days for the wave of deportees they thought would come.
“We were here waiting, waiting,” he recalled. “Nothing ever happened.”
Currently two deported families are staying within the Borderline Crisis Center, and Cabrera said she hasn’t seen a surge in deportees in Tijuana needing shelter.
“We didn’t expect the numbers to rise that much because logistically it was impossible,” she said. “It’s not deportees but journalists that have been coming in flocks.”
Webb said that of the people who are deported to Mexico, many are sent further south to Tapachula or Tabasco.
Still, directors of migration shelters are preparing for a potential crisis, she noted, adding that centers across Tijuana are working to improve communication and organization with each other in anticipation of what may come.
"I think that what we have seen so far is more performance than anything. But this doesn’t mean that it’s not going to actually work eventually,” Cabrera added.
Trump’s daily deportation average between Jan. 26 and March 8 was 661 removals per day, according to data calculated by The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRACT).
That number is down from the earlier average between Jan. 26 and Feb. 8, which stood at 693. It also falls nearly 11 percent below President Joe Biden’s daily average, during the entirety of his administration, of 742 deportations.
With regard to overall removal rates, both Obama and Biden outpaced Trump’s current numbers. Obama set a record of deporting more than 43,000 people in 2013 and removed over 5.3 million during his time in office.
Rick Su, a professor of law at UNC-Chapel Hill who specializes in immigration, said part of Trump's lag stems from a shift in priorities — targeting mass arrests rather than focusing on individuals with strong removal cases.
The Laken Riley Act, signed into law on Jan. 29, expands mandatory detention for non-U.S. citizens based on offenses Su described as under “lower priority” for Biden and Obama.
While arrests are rising, Su said detention capacity is not.
"I know we’re shipping people off to Panama; we’re opening Guantanamo, and that’s all good for theater, but those numbers that we’re talking about for detention are miniscule,” he said.
Though Trump ordered the U.S. Navy to prepare Guantanamo to hold up to 30,000 migrants, the facility has only cumulatively held about 400 migrants since January.
To meet Trump’s Guantanamo detainment goal, Adm. Alvin Holsey, head of the U.S. Southern Command told the House Armed Services Committee two weeks ago that the Pentagon would need to mobilize more than 9,000 troops to the site.
In mid-February, Panama held nearly 300 deportees. According to TRAC data as recent as March 23, 47,892 people total were in immigration detention.
Though additional agencies have been looped into immigration enforcement such as the IRS and Homeland Security, their expanded arrests do not expand detention capacity, Su added.
He also said military flights are additionally “not dramatically increasing our removal capacity.”
Under the Obama and Biden administrations, Su said more detained individuals for immigration violations were suspected criminal offenders, making it more likely they would receive final removal orders, Su said.
“The reason why they were able to hit the numbers that they hit despite the fact that they’re solely soft is they prioritized the people that they thought should be deported the most,” he said. “And those people happen to be easier to deport.”
Webb echoed that people with criminal histories or longstanding removal orders are much easier to deport.
But under Trump’s broader approach — to “arrest essentially anybody and everybody”, Su said — many of those being detained now may have legitimate legal grounds to remain in the country.
Webb noted that people with removal orders have a right to appeal within 30 days, a legal process that could make their cases “dragged out for years.”
“One of the things I’ve always said about the Trump administration is that they act like movie villains in that they announce all of their plans and post about them on Instagram,” she said. “They make it into this big show — well that also makes it easier to sue.”
According to Just Security’s litigation tracker, there are currently more than 40 immigration and citizenship related lawsuits filed against Trump. Deportation defense attorneys, Webb added, can leverage these cases to strengthen their legal arguments.
What Su said he thinks could be the future tactic of the administration is using detention as a pressure strategy to encourage migrants to self-deport. Relying on prolonged confinement in harsh conditions was used during Trump’s first term, Webb said.
Under due process, a certain number of people will always find relief, Su said — but making people wait years in detention for a shot is another way to get people out of the country.
During Trump’s first administration, and under Biden, ICE frequently appealed asylum grants for detained individuals, even when cases were considered legally sound cases.
“Likely, some [currently detained] individuals are going to be like, ‘Forget it. I have a valid asylum claim, I’m afraid for my life to go home, but this is worse,’” Su speculated will happen with current detainees.
Rather than deporting everyone outright, he said another strategy may be to weaponize fear itself.
Targeting a large number of migrants in what he called “a really scary” way could compel even more people to leave voluntarily to avoid becoming entangled with enforcement.
Webb also noted Trump’s expansion of ICE access into previously protected spaces such as schools and churches.
“The scary part about all this is technically under the law, the reason why all this can happen without, let’s say, a right to a trial or right to a jury or right to a lawyer is because none of this is considered punishment,” Su said
“It takes money and it takes time and it’s not clear we’re going to get anywhere close to what Trump will require for mass deportation,” Su said.
He estimates that detention capacity could rise to 150,000 people, but nowhere near the 11 to 13 million undocumented individuals estimated to be living in the U.S., according to Pew Research Center and other immigration research groups.
“I don’t think he knows what it would take,” Cabrera said about Trump, “But with a good consultant he can figure it out.”
Because arrests are increasing, Su predicts that fewer undocumented people will engage in systems that increase their visibility, such as ICE check-ins — making future enforcement efforts more difficult.
“It’s just going to get harder and harder to detect them [illegal immigrants], so they’re going to have to go even more draconian, more checkpoints, more whatever,” he said. “For Americans, they have to realize it’s going to be more of an imposition on their everyday lives.”
Even if Congress were to allocate a massive budget to ICE and expand detention capacity, Su said mass deportation would still require planning and logistical organization that he thinks may be beyond this administration’s capabilities.
“Moving fast does not always mean doing more. Those things are not the same. And sometimes moving fast is just chaos,” he said.
The two deported families residing at the Borderline Crisis Center sleep in tents clustered on slick tile floors, with tarps strung up to serve as makeshift windows. On one shelter wall, a child’s handmade sign — scrawled in rainbow-colored marker — reads: “Mi mamá me ama” (“My mom loves me”).
Just a few blocks away, the Deportee Welcome Center remains still. No footsteps approach, no voices fill the air. It stands in silence.
“It’s not really even about the full numbers,” Su said. “It’s about recognizing that these individuals are second class and maybe shouldn’t be here.”
Su suspects that, if given the choice between deporting more people fairly or fewer people harshly, the government would likely choose the latter.
He emphasized it’s not “just theater,” but a symbolic statement that certain individuals who count as “true Americans” are afforded more rights.
Cabrera echoed that the broader issue at the heart of immigration enforcement is about control over who belongs in the United States.
Though border security once revolved around undocumented criminals, Su noted that the rhetoric has since expanded to include even legal residents.
“The whole point is — you’re not a citizen, so you don’t have these protections,” he said.
Webb added that the real focus in immigration conversation should be on how citizenship itself is used to define who has rights.
“If somebody, because they’re not a citizen, has no rights, then the only thing that’s stopping you as a citizen from not having rights is the government saying that,” she added.