Keep Out! How the U.S. Is Militarizing Mexico's Southern Border.

• Author: Abbott, Jeff

Marvin Garcia looks out over the Suchiate River from the Guatemalan side of Mexico's southern border. For twenty-one years, he has ferried numerous people across this river who were making their way to the United States. But the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States has changed that.

"In past years, there were many people crossing the river to migrate northwards," Garcia, forty-four, told me. "But now with the politics in the United States, and the number of people being deported, the number has drastically declined here."

An elderly man, who declined to give his name, added, "But we know that people are still going because we see them being deported in buses."

As recently as three years ago, this was a popular border crossing for people migrating to the United States. The walls of the Mexican side of the border reflect this, with giant murals with messages to migrants, and promotion of mobile applications from the United Nations that offer information and support to migrants. But the boom in roadway checkpoints throughout Mexico has caused many migrants to make the journey to the United States by foot, which is more dangerous. Robberies and assaults are common.

"As a result of the politics of Trump, there is a very significant decrease in the number of migrants heading north," said Enrique Vidal Olascoaga, an analyst with the San Cristobal de las Casas-based human rights organization Voces Mesoamericanas. "But there is a significant increase in the violence and brutality against migrants. There are fewer migrants, but greater violence against them."

During the campaign, Trump promised to build a wall along the border between Mexico and the United States to stop illegal migration. But the lesser-known focus of this administration is the border more than 1,600 miles south, between Mexico and Guatemala. This 541-mile-long stretch has become the frondine in the United States' campaign against migration from the Northern Triangle of Central America.

"The southern border between Mexico and the Northern Triangle is, I think, quite secure now," said Vice President Mike Pence during a June 22 speech at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. "And that's a great credit to Mexico." Pence added that the northern border between the United States and Mexico is also "working better" and achieving its goal of keeping out "bad people."

The "bad people" that Pence refers to are men and women like Juan Mendez, a twenty-four-year-old young man from the highland town of Nebaj, Quiche, Guatemala. In early 2016, after years of consideration, Mendez (a pseudonym to protect his safety) left his wife and two children to migrate to the United States. He hoped to help his family escape the clutches of poverty.

After one failed attempt in May 2016, Mendez set out again that November, just days before the election of Donald Trump. He made it through the southernmost Mexican state of Chiapas but was caught at a migration checkpoint in Chihuahua, a state in northwestern Mexico.

"I was taken off the bus," Mendez told me one night on a street in Nebaj. "My voice was quivering and hands were shaking as the agent asked me question after question. The last question he asked me to sing the Mexican national anthem, and I did not know the words."

Mendez was taken to the...