When he fled Ecuador in 2024, Diego hoped to start a new life in the United States with his 5-year-old lab mix Blacky. A year later, Blacky lives in Arizona, but Diego remains in limbo just across the border in Mexico.
That’s because Diego was one of the thousands of migrants who arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border in the weeks before President Donald Trump banned asylum seekers on his first day in office.
“I’m trapped here,” Diego said from a migrant shelter in Nogales, Sonora, just feet from the border with Arizona.
Now, he and thousands of others who fled violence in their home countries are making a new bet for safety: claiming asylum in Mexico. But they’re up against an already overburdened system that experts say has been stretched further, thanks to cuts in foreign aid from the Trump administration.
Diego says he left Ecuador after threats from extortionists, who attacked him at his home and demanded $15,000 USD for his life. KJZZ is only using his first name for his safety. The 61-year-old civil engineer is one of many in Ecuador who have suffered from a recent spike in violence.
Before leaving home, he sent his dog by plane to his sister in Arizona. His plan was to seek asylum in the United States, but after Trump halted asylum claims on the border on his first day in office, Diego now can’t cross.
The asylum process in Mexico hasn’t been easy either. Slow processing of asylum claims in the country means he can’t get the documents he needs to work. The process is generally supposed to take 45 business days, but can stretch to closer to a year, refugee advocates and lawyers say.
It is partly because the Mexican agency that processes those claims, known as COMAR for its initials in Spanish, has long been overburdened.
“We were always struggling to get more budget to no avail,” says Andrés Ramírez, who led COMAR under the prior Mexican presidential administration from 2018 to 2024.
It is a problem that Ramírez and refugee advocates say appears to be getting worse. In past years, about half of COMAR’s budget came from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, according to some estimates. The United States this year slashed funding to the United Nations agency, causing it to close four offices in Mexico and cut 200 positions.
A spokesperson for UNHCR’s Mexico division told KJZZ that it was forced to cut 30% of its funding to COMAR in the second half of 2025.
“The current difficulties in accessing documentation and services for asylum seekers and refugees are worrying,” the UNHCR Mexico spokesperson said in an email. “They expose people to abuse and greater risks.”
The UNHCR cuts are having an impact on COMAR’s capacity to process refugee claims, said Gretchen Kuhner, the director of the Institute for Women in Migration, a nonprofit that advocates for asylum seekers in Mexico.
“That means that we also have a debilitated government agency that’s in charge of adjudicating asylum claims in Mexico,” Kuhner said.
COMAR did not respond to requests for comment.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration did suggest a large increase in funding for COMAR in its budget proposal for 2026. But refugee advocacy groups say far too little of those funds go toward salaries and hiring enough people to meet the existing backlog of cases.
For people like Diego, who are waiting for their claims to be decided, the backlog means months of being in limbo.
“Months and months pass and we get depressed,” Diego said. Without documents, he can’t find a job as a civil engineer.
The nonprofit ecosystem that supports migrants in Mexico is also facing pressures, as Trump’s foreign aid cuts take a toll on groups that provide shelter and pro-bono legal aid. Some groups have had to cease operating in Mexico completely, said Leonie Tax, who heads Mexico operations for the International Rescue Committee.
“The funding cuts have affected every organization on a national level and on a local level severely,” Tax said. “What that means is there’s fewer services available for refugees and migrants.”
In some parts of Mexico, her aid group has no services left to refer migrants to, Tax said.
The lack of services, in addition to the long wait times for legal status, leaves migrants vulnerable. They’re more likely to be living on the streets or be forced to take jobs that will abuse them, said Rachel Schmidtke with the advocacy group Refugees International. Plus, she said, without legal status, they become more susceptible to kidnappings and extortion from criminal groups.
“Criminal networks in Mexico, particularly ones that prey on migrants, are very good, sadly, at what they do,” Schmidtke said. “So there’s just a whole host of things that could happen to people who haven’t had their asylum claims approved.”
Diego spends his days at the shelter in Nogales as he waits for his claim to process. But even as he waits for papers in Mexico, he’s holding out hope he can one day make it to the United States. His teenage son lives in Kansas. And he misses his dog.
“I’m impatient, but I have to wait,” Diego said. “There’s nothing else I can do.”
