Since February 2025, thousands of Venezuelan asylum-seekers have been turned away from the United States-Mexico border and denied the right to apply for protection in the U.S. Along with other Venezuelans who were living in the U.S. and have been deported, they’ve been forced to head south, either back to Venezuela or to other countries in Central and South America.

This phenomenon — commonly described as reverse migration — raises important questions about the capacity or willingness of countries in the region to ensure the safety and security of these migrants.

As part of ongoing research, we talked to asylum-seekers and collected their insights during our field work in Costa Rica in November and December 2025. Our interviews revealed that those who abandoned the hope of crossing into the U.S. made the decision for many reasons.

Expecting a better life in Venezuela was not among them. Instead, many faced repeated obstacles along the way, which accumulated over time into what can be described as journey fatigue.

The migrants we interviewed experienced physical exhaustion from long periods of waiting, economic hardship, fear and incidents of violence in Mexico, as well as fraud and theft, while access to institutional or humanitarian support steadily declined.

The final blow for most of them came from changes in the U.S. asylum and temporary protection policies. These included the termination of the two‑year humanitarian parole program, the freezing of asylum application processing for Venezuelans and nationals of 18 other countries and the inclusion of Venezuelans in travel bans restricting entry for citizens of 39 countries.

These policy shifts were combined........

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