15 hours ago

Will GrantMexico, Central America and Cuba correspondent in Honduras

BBC

Elías Padilla stopped his plans to move to the US because he fears detention and deportation

For over a year, Elías Padilla had been saving up to make the journey from Honduras to the United States as an undocumented immigrant.

As an Uber driver in the snarled streets of the capital, Tegucigalpa, it hasn't been easy for him to put money aside. On bad days he makes as little as $12 (£9) in 12 hours.

Now, though, his plans are on hold.

The images of undocumented immigrants in major US cities being dragged away by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, their wrists in zip-ties, have deterred at least one would-be immigrant in Central America from travelling north.

"I want to improve my life conditions because we earn very little here," Elías explains as we drive around the city. "Take this line of work, for example: an Uber driver in the US makes in an hour what I'd make in a day."

Like most Honduran immigrants, Elías says the main aim of reaching the US would be to send remittances home.

"But I see what Trump is doing, and it's made me think twice," he admits.

"I'm going to wait to see what the change in government here brings," he says, referring to the recent presidential election. "Hopefully things will improve."

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President Trump has ordered a massive crackdown on illegal immigration

Elías's change of heart will doubtless be welcome news to the architects of President Donald Trump's immigration policies including border czar Tom Homan and homeland security adviser Stephen Miller.

As well as removing undocumented immigrants from US soil, the controversial ICE operations in Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte and Minneapolis were always intended also to dissuade people like Elías from even attempting to leave Honduras.

However, the policies have brought an unexpected windfall to the Honduran economy: the thousands of Hondurans who live undocumented and under the radar in those cities are sending home more remittances than ever.

With many undocumented Hondurans sharing the sense of a looming threat or deadline over their futures, many are trying to send every spare dollar back to their families before it is too late.

Between January and October this year, there was a 26% rise in remittances to Honduras compared with the same period the previous year.

In fact, even though their numbers are dwindling in the US, Hondurans increased the amount the sent home from $9.7bn (£7.2bn) in all of 2024 to more than $10.1bn (£7.5bn) in just the first nine months of this year.

The BBC spoke to one, Marcos (not his real name), on the phone from a major US city where he has lived for five years, working in construction.

"Most of the money I send home is for the family to cover their basics like food. But also, so they can put something to one side to buy a little land on which we can eventually build a house, maybe buy a car," he says.

Since President Trump took office, Marcos says he only keeps the very minimum he needs for rent and food in the US. Everything else goes to Honduras.

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Hondurans in the US are sending home more money than ever before

He has steadily increased the amount he sends to his wife and two children in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, "from $500 a month to more like $300 dollars a week," he says. He also tries to send even more in December to cover the costs of Christmas.

"It's like a race against time" to send home as much as possible before he's caught up in ICE's dragnet of arrests, explains Marcos.

"I used to think about bringing my family up here. Now, with everything happening with Trump and ICE and so much fear in the streets, I just want to make sure that if I am picked up, there'll be a little money set aside down there."

In part, he adds, he's also trying to prepare for the eventuality of his arrest, knowing his family will not be able to rely on him being able to provide if he's in a detention centre for two months.

But President Trump's policies are not just affecting the formal economy through remittances. The illegal economy, via people-smuggling, has also been impacted.

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Cartels in Mexico primarily control the route taking migrants from Central America to the US

Jimmy (not his real name) is a former coyote or people smuggler who agreed to speak to the BBC at a location outside the capital. For 20 years he made a living taking people across Mexico, generally considered the most dangerous leg of the journey.

It is an illegal industry primarily run by Mexican organised crime groups and although Jimmy claims he did not specifically work for any of the major cartels, he acknowledges he operated with their knowledge and their blessing.

Today, he says, potential clients are finding "the price has doubled, from $12,000-13,000 per person to more like $25,000-30,000".

"People are still getting through, though," insists Jimmy. "It was a lot more under the CBP One app [a Biden-era legal pathway to lodge asylum requests] but maybe 40% are still getting there."

Fewer people are leaving because "not everyone can pay" the elevated costs of the people smuggler, he adds.

Among them, Uber driver Elías Padilla.

Having worked hard and sold personal items to get the funds together, Elías simply cannot afford to risk being deported soon after arriving in the US.

Even though he knows his chances of successfully settling in the United States have diminished under Donald Trump, Elías says he has little choice but to wait – for either the current wave of ICE raids or the entire Trump presidency to pass.

Central American migrants have seen all manner of hardline policies against them over the years, he adds – both by regional governments and by Washington. With the economic outlook in Honduras still bleak, Elías thinks there is little that can hold people back for long. Not even the current crackdown.

"Trump has only postponed my plans," he insists. "Not cancelled them."