Writer and translator Sarah DeVries, a US native, has made México her adopted home, a reminder that migration doesn’t just go in one direction. In her latest México News Daily commentary, the Veracruz-based DeVries explores how the massive number of arrivals today are sorely testing México’s immigrant policies. An excerpt below.

Ever since President Trump essentially bullied México into becoming the wall, this country has taken on an outsized role in trying to control the flow of would-be immigrants to the southern U.S. border. It hasn’t been easy.

México, my adopted home, is trying to make progress. After flowery talk about what a great country Mexico would be as a final stop for those on their way to the US, the sheer number of people trying to make their way across seems to have overwhelmed and exhausted the government’s goodwill. The same is true for the communities suddenly seeing thousands of desperate people showing up who don’t plan to hang around and eventually contribute to those communities.

It’s now become a perfect storm: the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance, the immigration branch responsible for processing them, has seen its budget cut as the influx of migrants has increased to numbers never before seen in this country’s modern era.

The migrants themselves are losing patience as well, stranded in places like Tapachula, Chiapas without the ability to work or to keep pressing ahead as their immigration applications take a year to be processed even though they’re required to be processed within three months.

I do think México — and the US, for that matter — are trying their best to find solutions. But the sheer number of people has put immediate deportation of immigrants back on the table. México has said it will start deporting Haitians as well, and I fear that exhausted officials and bitterly disappointed and despairing people will wind up being an explosive combination.