By José de Córdoba in Mexico City and Michelle Hackman in Washington 

The coronavirus pandemic has slowed migration to the U.S. to a trickle, according to new figures released by the Trump administration on Thursday.

The reason, say human smugglers, migrant advocates and analysts is the global health crisis that has knocked the world economy flat, led the U.S. to close its southern border to migrants and forced countries around the world -- including the Central American nations many of the migrants are coming from -- to close borders and implement draconian domestic curfews, making movement near impossible.

Border crossings significantly slowed in late March and early April, according to new numbers from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Since March 21, when the new border restrictions took effect, about 600 people have crossed the border a day, less than half the pace border authorities reported in January and February.

Overall, about 30,000 migrants were arrested crossing the border in March, roughly the same number as in the two prior months.

In March, the Trump administration announced it was temporarily shuttering the border to migrants -- an outcome it had long sought -- under a public-health law the president used to declare the coronavirus outbreak a major emergency. The administration said the step was necessary because migrants crossing the border illegally couldn't be properly screened and any coming into the country infected with the virus could spread it rapidly through cramped and unsanitary border stations.

On Thursday, Mark Morgan, the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said the administration's drastic actions are protecting Americans by turning away people who could potentially be sick.

"What we do know is [migrants] don't have access to hand sanitizer, and the human smugglers they pay don't practice social distancing," Mr. Morgan said. "This has to be a wake-up call that border security matters."

Mr. Morgan said fewer than 100 migrants are currently in Border Patrol custody, compared with the thousands it typically detains.

In Guatemala, one of the largest sources of illegal immigration to the U.S., human smugglers say they have suspended operations.

"There's no movement, because of the illness," says David Reyes, a human smuggler, or coyote, who works in the area of Joyabaj, a mountainous, mostly indigenous municipality of some 100,000 people. Mr. Reyes, who charges close to $10,000 a head to move people into the U.S., said he hasn't moved any migrants up through Mexico for the past three weeks. He said he hopes to move a group of migrants in two weeks to a month, depending on the situation then.

"People are scared," he said.

Borders are closed in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America, which have produced the most immigrants over the past few years. They have each instituted draconian lockdown regulations that prohibit almost all movement, especially on public buses going from municipality to municipality. In Honduras, for instance, the public bus station in the city of San Pedro Sula, the traditional starting point for many recent migrant caravans to the U.S., sits empty.

"There is no possibility of moving from one city to another," says Karla Rivas, coordinator of the Jesuit Migrant Network. "In Honduras there is a total curfew and the police are very strict."

Mr. Reyes, the Guatemalan smuggler, says he sends his migrants through Altar, a town in the Mexican border state of Sonora. In Altar, there are no migrants to be found, says the Rev. Prisciliano Peraza, a Catholic priest who runs a shelter with the capacity to house as many as 400 migrants at a time. On a typical day, 70 migrants live there, preparing to cross the U.S. border.

"It's like a ghost town in a Western movie," Mr. Peraza said. There are only 10 migrants left in his shelter, all of whom arrived before the pandemic and are still waiting to make the journey into the U.S.

Father Peraza said the migrant flow began to slow some three weeks ago, but then 10 days ago it came to a complete stop.

Aid groups say many shelters have stopped accepting new arrivals.

If smugglers aren't moving people, it is because people are waiting for a better time, and because of the news that the U.S. border has been closed, Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan Washington think tank.

"The word has gotten out that now is just not the time to travel," said Duncan Wood, director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan policy forum.

Under the temporary U.S. border closure, which is currently in effect until late April but which could be renewed, nearly all migrants who are encountered crossing the border are quickly turned around, without a formal record of their presence in the U.S. or a deportation order.

That includes migrants who ask for asylum, who under U.S. immigration law and international treaties cannot be turned away if they express a fear of being persecuted in their home countries. The Border Patrol has also been turning away most children crossing the border, in a break with past practice.

Mexico has agreed to accept back Central American migrants expelled from the U.S., along with its own citizens, for the duration of the border closure. In exchange, cargo and seasonal workers are permitted to continue crossing the border freely, according to Mexican and U.S. officials.

Even before the March border closure, the administration had enacted several new restrictive asylum policies to curb migrants' access to the U.S. Perhaps the most successful of these is its "Remain in Mexico" policy, formally called the Migrant Protection Protocols, under which migrants are returned to violent Mexican border cities for the duration of their U.S. court cases. As a result, the number of migrants crossing the border had already fallen by about 75% since last May, when the administration ramped up the Remain in Mexico program.

It is tougher to predict how long a slowdown might last. Andrew Meehan, a former top spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security under the Trump administration, said with Mr. Trump's emergency order in place, "it is unlikely that an individual will risk traveling to the U.S. border."

But, he added, the administration's actions cannot deter migrant flows for long if Latin American economies crater or violence picks up. Job losses in the U.S. have hit a disproportionate number of Latino immigrants, many of whom send money to family members in Mexico and Central America. Those remittances add up to billions of dollars flowing to Latin American economies.

"The conditions for another migration surge, such as a lack of economic opportunity and increased violence, are there," Mr. Meehan said.

In Guatemala, the Rev. Mauro Verzeletti, who runs a migrants' shelter in Guatemala City, agrees. "There will be an avalanche of migrants," he says.

--Alicia A. Caldwell contributed to this article.

Write to José de Córdoba at jose.decordoba@wsj.com and Michelle Hackman at Michelle.Hackman@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 09, 2020 21:32 ET (01:32 GMT)

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