Mexico scrambles to build tents to handle mass deportations from US

The Mexican government is building large encampments in Ciudad Juárez to receive an expected influx of Mexicans returned to their native country by President Donald Trump’s promised mass deportations.

Tent shelters in Ciudad Juárez are made to temporarily house thousands of people and will be prepared in just a few days, city official Enrique Licon told Reuters.

“It’s unprecedented,” Licon said Tuesday of Mexico’s plan to build shelter and reception centers in nine cities south of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Authorities at the site will reportedly provide deported Mexicans with food, temporary housing, medical care and assistance in obtaining identity documents, Reuters reported.

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The government will also provide transportation for Mexican nationals to return to their hometowns.

Trump campaigned on launching the largest mass deportations of illegal immigrants in U.S. history and began that effort after assuming office on Monday. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has already made more than 460 arrests, targeting illegal immigrants with criminal records, including for violent crimes. 

Information obtained by Fox News Digital shows that between midnight Jan. 21 and 9 a.m. on Jan, 22, a 33-hour period, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) arrested more than 460 illegal immigrants whose criminal histories include sexual assault, robbery, burglary, aggravated assault, drugs and weapons offenses, resisting arrest and domestic violence.

Agents arrested nationals from a slew of countries, including Afghanistan, Angola, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Senegal and Venezuela.

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Arrests took place across the U.S. including Illinois, Utah, California, Minnesota, New York, Florida and Maryland. 

Nearly five million Mexicans are living in the United States without authorization, according to an analysis by Mexican think tank El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF) based on recent U.S. census data.

Many are from parts of central and southern Mexico wracked by violence and poverty. Some 800,000 illegally present Mexicans in the United States are from Michoacan, Guerrero and Chiapas, according to the COLEF study, where fierce battles between organized crime groups have forced thousands to flee in recent years, sometimes leaving whole towns abandoned.

Trump has swiftly restarted policies aimed to halt the flow of migrants into the U.S. that former President Biden had ended. On Monday, the Trump administration ended the CBP One app program, which allowed migrants waiting in Mexico to schedule an appointment to enter the U.S. legally. Then on Tuesday, Trump reinstated Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), a requirement that non-Mexican asylum seekers wait in Mexico until their cases are resolved.

Immigration activists worry that Trump’s strict immigration policies will overwhelm Mexico with deportees, but the government insists it is prepared.

“Mexico will do everything necessary to care for its compatriots, and will allocate whatever is necessary to receive those who are repatriated,” Mexico’s Interior Minister Rosa Icela Rodriguez said on Monday at a press conference, according to Reuters. 

Fox News Digital’s Adam Shaw and Reuters contributed to this report.