Fearing deportation, Hondurans in the U.S. are sending home more cash than ever

For more than a year, Elias Padilla had been saving money to travel to the United States from Honduras as an undocumented immigrant.

Saving money wasn’t easy for him as an Uber driver on the chaotic streets of the capital, Tegucigalpa. On a bad day, he earns as little as $12 (£9) in 12 hours.

But now, his plans are on hold.

The image of undocumented immigrants being hauled away by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents with zip ties around their wrists in major U.S. cities has stopped at least one would-be Central American migrant from heading north.

“I want to improve my living conditions because we make very little money here,” Elias explains as we drive around the city. “Take this line of work as an example: an Uber driver in the United States makes as much in an hour as I make in a day.”

Like most Honduran immigrants, Elias said the main purpose of arriving in the United States was to send money back home.

“But I see what Trump is doing and it makes me think twice,” he admitted.

“I’m going to wait and see what the change in government here brings,” he said, referring to the recent presidential election. “Hopefully things will improve.”

Elias’s change of heart is welcome news to those shaping U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, including border czar Tom Homan and homeland security adviser Stephen Miller.

In addition to expelling undocumented immigrants from U.S. soil, ICE’s controversial operations in Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte and Minneapolis have always been aimed at preventing people like Elias from trying to leave Honduras.

Yet these policies have brought an unexpected windfall to the Honduran economy: thousands of undocumented and under-the-radar Hondurans living in these cities are sending home more remittances than ever before.

Many undocumented Hondurans feel their futures are facing an imminent threat or deadline, and many are trying to send any extra dollars back to their families before it’s too late.

From January to October this year, remittances received by Honduras increased by 26% compared with the same period last year.

Indeed, while their numbers in the US are declining, the amount of money Hondurans send home has increased from $9.7bn (£7.2bn) in all of 2024 to more than $10.1bn (£7.5bn) in the first nine months of this year.

The BBC interviewed Marcos (pseudonym) by phone from a major American city, where he has lived for five years and works in construction.

“Most of the money I send home is to cover basic living expenses for the family, like food. But also, so they can put something aside and buy a small plot of land that we can eventually build a house on and maybe buy a car,” he said.

Marcos said he has kept only the bare minimum necessary for rent and food in the United States since Trump took office. Everything else belongs to Honduras.

He said the amount of money he sent to his wife and two children in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, had steadily increased, “from $500 a month to about $300 a week.” He also tried to send more money in December to pay for Christmas.

“It’s like a race against time,” Marcos explained, to get as many as possible home before getting caught in ICE’s web of arrests.

“I used to think about bringing my family here. Now, with everything that’s going on with Trump and ICE and the fear in the streets, I just want to make sure there’s a little money left there if I get busted.”

He added that to some extent he was also trying to prepare for his possible arrest because he knew his family would not be able to rely on him for support if he stayed in a detention center for two months.

But Trump’s policies don’t just affect the formal economy through remittances. The illegal economy through human smuggling has also been affected.

Jimmy (pseudonym) is a former coyote Or people smugglers agree to be interviewed by the BBC in a location outside the capital. For 20 years, he made a living taking people through Mexico, which is often considered the most dangerous part of the journey.

It’s an illegal industry largely run by Mexican organized crime groups, and although Jimmy claims he doesn’t work specifically for any major cartel, he admits he operates with their knowledge and support.

Today, potential customers are seeing “prices that have doubled, from $12,000-13,000 per person to around $25,000-30,000,” he said.

“People are still getting through it, though,” Jimmy insists. “It’s much more under the CBP One application[the legal way to make asylum claims in the Biden era]but maybe 40% still get there.”

He added that fewer people are leaving because “not everyone can afford” the increased costs imposed by people smugglers.

Among HOSHE is Uber driver Elías Padilla.

Elias, who raised money by working hard and selling personal belongings, simply could not afford to risk being deported soon after arriving in the United States.

While Elias knows his chances of successfully settling in the United States have diminished under Trump, he said he has no choice but to wait — either for the current wave of ICE raids or for Trump’s entire presidency to be over.

He added that over the years, Central American migrants have witnessed a variety of hard-line policies directed at them from local governments and Washington. As Honduras’ economic outlook remains bleak, Elias sees nothing to keep people stagnant for long. Not even the current crackdown.

“Trump just delayed my plans,” he insisted. “They’re not cancelled.”