ACAPULCO, Mexico – About 100 migrants from various countries wandered directionless and disoriented through the streets of the restive Pacific coast resort town of Acapulco.

After a few weeks of walking through southern Mexico with hundreds of other migrants, they accepted an offer from immigration authorities to come to Acapulco with the idea of ​​continuing their journey north toward the U.S. border. Instead, they were stuck on Monday.

Two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump’s second inauguration, Mexico continues to break up attention-grabbing migrant caravans and spread the migrants across the country to keep them away from the U.S. border while limiting the concentration of migrants in one place.

The policy of “dispersion and exhaustion” has become the focus of the Mexican government’s immigration policy in recent years and managed to significantly reduce the number of migrants reaching the U.S. border last year, said Tonatiuh Guillén, former Head of the Mexican Immigration Service.

Mexico’s current government hopes the lower numbers will give them some protection from Trump’s pressure, said Guillen, who left former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration after Trump threatened to impose tariffs on migration during his first presidency .

Acapulco seems like a strange destination for migrants. Once a crown jewel of Mexico’s tourism industry, the city now suffers under the thumb of organized crime and is still struggling to recover after taking a direct hit from the devastating Hurricane Otis in 2023.

On Monday, Mexican tourists enjoyed the final hours of their beach vacation while migrants slept on the streets or tried to find ways to continue their journey north.

“The immigration officials told us they would give us a permit to travel freely through the country for 10, 15 days, but that was not the case,” said a 28-year-old Venezuelan, Ender Antonio Castañeda. “They left us here with no way to get out. They won’t sell us (bus) tickets, they won’t sell us anything.”

Castañeda, like thousands of other migrants, had left the southern town of Tapachula near the Guatemalan border. More than half a dozen caravans, each carrying about 1,500 migrants, have set out from Tapachula in recent weeks, but none of them have made it very far.

The authorities let them walk for days until they are exhausted, then offer to take them on buses to different cities where they will supposedly check their immigration status, which could mean anything.

Some have ended up in Acapulco, where about a dozen are sleeping in a Catholic church near immigration offices.

Several dozen gathered outside the offices Monday looking for information, but no one would tell them anything. Castañeda, who had just received money from his family and was eager to leave, chose a van driver from among the many drivers who he felt was the most trustworthy, offering rides for up to five times the normal price of a bus ticket to Mexico City

Some migrants have discovered that permits issued to them by authorities allow them to travel only within the state of Guerrero, where Acapulco is located. Other migrants are luckier.

On Sunday, the latest migrant caravan disbanded after hundreds received free transit permits for a certain number of days anywhere in Mexico.

Among them were Cuban Dayani Sánchez, 33, and her husband.

“We are a little afraid that they might stop us because of the lack of security when boarding the buses,” she said. Mexico’s drug cartels often target migrants for kidnapping and extortion, although many migrants say authorities also extort them.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum insists her immigration strategy has a “humanitarian” focus and has allowed more migrants to leave southernmost Mexico. But some migration advocates point out that migrants are being taken to violent areas.

This concern is shared by Rev. Leopoldo Morales, the priest of the Catholic church in Acapulco near the immigration office.

He said that two or three immigration buses arrived in November with migrants, including entire families. Last weekend two more arrived with all adults.

Although Acapulco is not on the usual migration route and was not prepared to receive migrants, several priests coordinated support for them with water, food and clothing. “We know they are going through a very difficult time, with great need and no money,” Morales said.

Migrants quickly realize that it is difficult to find work in Acapulco. After the destruction of Otis, the federal government deployed hundreds of soldiers and National Guard troops to provide security and begin reconstruction. Last year another storm, John, caused widespread flooding.

But the violence in Acapulco has not subsided.

Acapulco has one of the highest murder rates in Mexico. Taxi drivers and small business owners complain – anonymously – about increasing extortion. Large companies are reluctant to rebuild under current circumstances.

Honduran Jorge Neftalí Alvarenga was grateful to have fled the Mexican state of Chiapas along the Guatemalan border, but was already disillusioned.

“In a way, they lied to us,” said Alvarenga, who thought he was going to Mexico City. “We asked for an agreement to send us to work in (Mexico City)” or other places like Monterrey, an industrial city in the north with more job opportunities.

Now he doesn’t know what to do.

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Associated Press writer Edgar H. Clemente in Tapachula, Mexico, contributed to this report.