The Long Journey Home for Migrants Turned Away From the U.S.

Summary

WSJ What’s News: The Long Journey Home for Migrants Turned Away From the U.S.
Episode Release Date: March 11, 2025
Host: Alex Osola, The Wall Street Journal

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1. US Military Support to Ukraine and Ceasefire Agreement

The episode opens with significant geopolitical developments as the United States restores military support to Ukraine following Kyiv's agreement to implement a 30-day ceasefire. This move comes after high-level negotiations between U.S. and Ukrainian officials, aiming to open peace talks between Kiev and Moscow contingent upon Russian acceptance.

Alex Osola reported, “The Trump administration has said it would immediately lift a pause on intelligence sharing and military support to Ukraine as Kyiv agreed to implement a 30 day ceasefire” (00:35). This agreement marks the first high-level dialogue since former President Trump's contentious interactions with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, where Trump criticized Zelensky's willingness to negotiate peace.

2. US-Canada Trade Tensions and Market Reactions

Trade tensions escalate as the U.S. announces an increase in tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum from 25% to 50%, a direct retaliation to Canada’s response to U.S. tariffs. Alex Osola detailed the economic ramifications, stating, “Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he's suspending the province's 25% surtax on U.S.-bound electricity hours after President Trump threatened the additional tariffs” (03:12). This tit-for-tat escalation has led to significant market volatility, with major U.S. indexes closing lower despite initial recovery attempts.

Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford responded to the tariff hike by suspending the surtax, aiming to mitigate the economic strain on local businesses and households. This development temporarily eased stock market losses triggered by the tariff announcement.

3. Artificial Intelligence Investments and Market Concerns

A notable segment examines the parallels between the current surge in artificial intelligence (AI) investments and the late 1990s dot-com bubble. Rolf Winkler, a WSJ Tech News Briefing reporter, highlighted investor apprehensions regarding the sustainability of AI-driven market growth.

Rolf Winkler explained, “There's a huge amount of investment going into a technology where the return is not yet clear” (03:12). He emphasized the uncertainty surrounding the commercialization and revenue generation from AI technologies, despite the hefty investments flowing into data centers and advanced GPUs.

4. Retail Sector's Sales Decline Predictions and Consumer Debt Worries

The episode shifts focus to the retail sector, with major chains like Kohl’s and Dick's Sporting Goods forecasting larger-than-expected sales declines for the fiscal year. Alex Osola connected these predictions to burgeoning concerns over American consumer debt and potential economic slowdown.

Retailers are bracing for reduced consumer spending amid fears of a recession. Telus Demos, a writer and co-host of WSJ's Take on the Week podcast, remarked, “The concern is that what's going on in the economy... are we gonna have huge numbers of government employees... impacting consumer credit” (04:58). This sentiment underscores the fragility of consumer confidence amid economic uncertainties.

5. Employment Data's Impact on Consumer Credit

New employment data reveals 7.74 million job openings in January, slightly surpassing expectations. Telus Demos elaborated on the implications of this data for consumer credit stability.

Telus Demos noted, “Employment is the lifeblood of consumer credit. Whatever's going on in the economy, if people are working, they're pretty good at paying back their debts” (05:53). He further highlighted that while current employment figures don’t signal immediate danger, the long-term sustainability of job growth remains a critical factor in maintaining consumer credit health.

6. The Long Journey Home for Migrants Turned Away from the U.S. Border

The core of the episode delves into the harrowing experiences of migrants who are being turned away at the U.S. southern border and the arduous journey back to their home countries. Juan Ferrero, WSJ South America Bureau Chief, provides firsthand insights into this reverse migration phenomenon.

Alex Osola introduces the segment, saying, “Migrants sometimes travel thousands of miles to reach the U.S. border. Increasingly, they're finding it effectively closed” (07:50). Juan Ferrero details the migrants' plight: “First Started out in Panama and then came back by boat... heading back into Colombia” (08:18), illustrating the desperate measures migrants take when denied asylum.

One poignant story features Hector Ferrer, a 69-year-old Venezuelan who, after unsuccessful attempts to seek asylum, is compelled to return home. Ferrer expressed his desolation, stating, “I was like in a hole, trapped. I didn't feel anything. I didn't have hope, no illusions, nothing. There was no horizon” (08:52). This emotional testimony underscores the human cost of restrictive immigration policies.

Juan Ferrero further explains the new trend of reverse migration: “What we used to see in the past was as many as 1500 people... heading north... now we're seeing people heading back the other way” (09:14). This shift poses significant logistical challenges for countries like Panama, which is ill-equipped to handle the sudden influx of returnees, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis.

7. US Government Funding Deadline and Budget Negotiations

Concluding the episode, Alex Osola addresses the imminent federal government funding deadline. With funding set to expire, the House is poised to vote on a bill to extend government funding through September, aiming to avert a shutdown.

Osola outlines the political maneuvering involved: “Vice President J.D. Vance rallied House Republicans to back the party's proposal... part of a last minute push to exert pressure on remaining holdouts” (11:32). Additionally, ongoing discussions in Congress include potential budget cuts to Medicaid, a critical program for low-income Americans. These cuts could have far-reaching impacts on state budgets and broader healthcare access.

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Conclusion

This episode of WSJ What’s News provides a comprehensive overview of pressing global and domestic issues, ranging from international conflicts and trade disputes to economic indicators and humanitarian crises. Through insightful reporting and expert analysis, host Alex Osola ensures that listeners are well-informed about the multifaceted factors shaping today's world.

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Notable Quotes:

• Rolf Winkler: “There's a huge amount of investment going into a technology where the return is not yet clear” (03:12).
• Telus Demos: “The concern is that what's going on in the economy... are we gonna have huge numbers of government employees... impacting consumer credit” (04:58).
• Hector Ferrer: “I was like in a hole, trapped. I didn't feel anything. I didn't have hope, no illusions, nothing. There was no horizon” (08:52).

Transcript

[Comcast Business]

With leading networking and connectivity, advanced cybersecurity and expert partnership. Comcast Business helps turn today's enterprises into engines of modern business. Powering the engine of modern business powering possibilities restrictions apply.

[Alex Osola]

The US Restores military support to Ukraine after Kyiv agrees to a ceasefire. Plus, do Americans have too much debt to keep the economy afloat?

[Telus Demos]

The risk is that we aren't really clued in on what's happening in consumer credit because the numbers are looking better. But under the hood things are getting.

[Alex Osola]

Worse and a growing number of migrants are being turned away from the US border. We follow them on their long journey back home. It's Tuesday, March 11th. I'm Alex Osola for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of what's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. The Trump administration has said it would immediately lift a pause on intelligence sharing and military support to Ukraine as Kyiv agreed to implement a 30 day ceasefire, according to a US Ukraine joint statement. The ceasefire plan, which is contingent on Russian acceptance, envisions opening negotiations between Kiev and Moscow on halting the war. The agreement is the result of the first high level talks between the US And Ukrainian officials since a combative Oval Office encounter in which President Trump accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of being unwilling to negotiate negotiate a peace settlement with Moscow. President Trump said in an online post Today that the U.S. will increase its planned 25% tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum to 50%. That's in response to Ottawa's retaliation to U.S. tariffs. The administration is still expected to move ahead with 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum from all other trading partners tomorrow. Trump's team has said repeatedly that there would be no exceptions or exemptions. Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he's suspending the province's 25% surtax on U S bound electricity, hours after President Trump threatened the additional tariffs. Canada's Prime Minister designate Mark Carney had called Trump's move to raise tariffs a direct attack on the country's households and businesses. Reports that Ontario was ready to roll back a surcharge on electricity delivered to the US Helped stocks recover from early session losses that began after President Trump said he would ramp up tariffs on steel and aluminum from Canada to 50%. Major US indexes still ended the day lower. The Nasdaq fell about 0.2%, the S&P 500 dipped about three quarters of a percent, and the Dow dropped just over 1%. Speaking of markets, 25 years ago this week the Nasdaq hit its.com era peak after soaring more than 500% in five years, the collapse that followed was quick and brutal. Today, some investors are worried that the same cycle might be playing out in artificial intelligence. WSJ reporter Rolf Winkler joined our Tech News Briefing podcast to talk about why people are comparing today's market to the dot com collapse.

[Rolf Winkler]

Probably just because there's a huge amount of investment going into a technology where the return is not yet clear. People are really excited about AI. There's a lot of really promising opportunities there. And you can see a world 10 years from now, 15 years from now where it changes everything, assuming that technology continues to progress. But right now we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars on basically GPUs, graphic processing units, Nvidia chips to fill out these cavernous data centers to power AI models that are cool and advancing. But we're not really sure how we're going to use them all just yet. Is there revenue behind all this investment that justifies the investment? Not yet.

[Alex Osola]

To hear more from Rolf, listen to tomorrow's episode of Tech News Brief. As you may have heard in our what's News and earnings last week, retailers are anticipating the impact of consumer spending pullback. Today, department store chain Kohl's said it predicts a larger than expected sales decline for this fiscal year. And Dick's Sporting Goods forecast earnings well below Wall Street's targets, citing economic uncertainty. In the past few years, American consumers have been able to spend through economic rough patches, putting purchases on their credit cards and keeping the economy afloat. But now concerns about a recession are rekindling worries that Americans are too overloaded with debt. For more on this, I'm joined by Heard on the street, writer and co host of WSJ's take on the Week podcast. Telus Demos, Telus, consumer lending and credit card companies like Amex, Capital One and Discover Financial were hit particularly hard in the stock market's recent plunge. So what exactly is investors concern here?

[Telus Demos]

The concern is that what's going on in the economy, with tariffs, with potential slowdowns in growth, President Trump didn't rule out a recession. Those things are not great for consumer borrowers. And so the issue is whether or not consumer lenders will continue to see increasing spending. Part of the way they make money is when you spend money, they make money when you use your card. The other way that they make money is by lending you money and you paying it back. And if you're not paying it back, that's not so great for them. So consumer lenders tend to be highly cyclical stocks. The risk is that we aren't really clued in on what's happening in consumer credit because the numbers are looking better, but under the hood things are getting worse.

[Alex Osola]

I'm curious where employment fits into this because there's new data out today from the Labor Department that shows that the US had 7.74 million job openings in January, which is higher than in December and slightly above expectations. So what does that mean?

[Telus Demos]

Employment is the lifeblood of consumer credit. Whatever's going on in the economy, if people are working, they're pretty good at paying back their debts. And so the risks that people see to employment are what will ultimately really drive if there's gonna be like a significant sell off of consumer lenders and consumer credit assets. And so the last jobs report was a little light versus expectations. So there's not necessarily any screaming red alarms right now. However you spin forward, some of the things happening with are we gonna la huge numbers of government employees. They are consumers like anyone else, and so something that impacts them would be meaningful for consumer credit. Here's what I focused on and maybe the kind of pivot point here, and that is what's going on with wealthier borrowers? Are they feeling the squeeze of concerns about their job future? They don't have endless budgets. And so that is the thing to key in on as the real variable here for the sort of the consumer borrower and consumer economy that was hurt on the street.

[Alex Osola]

Writer and co host of WSJ's take on the Week podcast, Telus Demos. Thank you, Telus.

[Telus Demos]

Thanks for having me.

[Alex Osola]

And if you want to know what consumers are doing, especially in the face of tariffs, listen to tomorrow's yous Money Briefing podcast as our reporters visit grocery stores, Best Buy and liquor stores to see what people are spending on. Coming up, the journey migrants take after they're turned away at the US Border. That's after the break.

[Comcast Business]

With leading networking and connectivity, advanced cybersecurity and expert partnership Comcast business helps turn today's enterprises into engines of modern business powering the engine of modern business powering possibilities. Restrictions apply.

[Alex Osola]

Migrants sometimes travel thousands of miles to reach the U.S. border. Increasingly, they're finding it effectively closed. There are new US Policies that make it nearly impossible for migrants to apply for asylum upon reaching the US Southern border. And for a growing number, that means having to turn around and travel back to where they came from. South America Bureau chief Juan Ferrero recently traveled to the border between Colombia and Panama to get a better understanding of this story.

[Juan Ferrero]

First Started out in Panama and then came back by boat. These are all people, by the way, who are taking the sea route, which is several hundred yards away from the coast, and heading back into Colombia, and then skipping from one town to another until they get to a bigger town where they can catch a bus to go anywhere else in South America.

[Alex Osola]

One person you spoke to was a man named Hector Ferrer. He's 69 years old and used to be a vendor in Venezuela. But he left because, as he describes it, things had gotten pretty grim.

[Telus Demos]

I was like in a hole, trapped. I didn't feel anything. I didn't have hope, no illusions, nothing. There was no horizon.

[Alex Osola]

You met him on his return journey where he was jostling for a seat on a ferry across the waters that separate Colombia from Panama. He was one of a number of people you spoke with who were on their way back home. How were these people feeling?

[Juan Ferrero]

There were a lot of people who, you know, were just disappointed they had made this investment in time and money. These are people who hadn't gotten to Mexico last week. They got into Mexico months ago. So we're talking some of them had been in Mexico for six, seven, eight, nine months, and they had been waiting to try to get into the United States and apply for political asylum, which you could do through an app that the Biden administration had created. Donald Trump did away with that app. And so people realized that though they had filled out the application to try to get to the United States and get a hearing to apply for political asylum, they knew they couldn't do that anymore, and so they opted to just head south.

[Alex Osola]

You know, Juan, you've reported on this before, and I'm just curious, is this reverse migration new?

[Juan Ferrero]

It is new. What we used to see in the past was as many as 1500 people, sometimes even more, heading north and eventually to the southwest border. And in this case, what we're starting to see, and this is pretty new, is people heading back the other way. We're not talking about huge numbers. We're talking about 150, 200 people leaving by boat from Panama and getting into Colombia. That's 150, 200 people a day, sometimes more, sometimes less.

[Alex Osola]

Who's feeling the impact of this reverse flow of migrants?

[Juan Ferrero]

The country that's feeling it the most is Panama, because Panama is a small country, only has 4.5 million people, and they've already had to deal with many, many hundreds of thousands of people heading north. And now they're starting to deal with people heading south. And so there's a whole logistical challenge there. The big beneficiaries are smuggling groups who benefited, of course, from the people heading north. These outfits are there ready to move them and offer them services and all this stuff to get them back home. And they try to charge as much as they can. So a lot of these migrants are running out of money on the way or they're getting back home without a cent in their pocket.

[Alex Osola]

That was WSJ South America bureau chief Juan Ferrero. Juan, thank you.

[Juan Ferrero]

Thank you.

[Alex Osola]

Funding for the federal government expires this weekend. The House is expected to vote this afternoon on a bill that would avert a government shutdown and extend government funding through the end of September. Vice President J.D. vance rallied House Republicans to back the party's proposal, part of a last minute push to exert pressure on remaining GE holdouts and pass the measure over Democratic opposition. Meanwhile, Congress is working on a budget and cuts to Medicaid are on the table. The program is mainly for low income Americans, but deep cuts could affect state budgets and health care more broadly. What questions do you have? Send a voice memo to wnpodsj.com or leave a voicemail with your name and location at 212-416-4328. We might use it on the show. And that's what's news for this Tuesday afternoon. Today's show is produced by Pierre Bienname and Anthony Banci with supervising producer Michael Kosmides. I'm Alex Osola for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.

[Comcast Business]

With leading networking and connectivity, advanced cybersecurity and expert partnership, Comcast business helps turn today's enterprises into engines of modern business. Powering the engine of modern business powering possibilities, restrictions apply.