Thread by @TexasTribune

1/ Welcome to La Técnica, Guatemala. This tiny town has built an entire economy around migrants and human smuggling.

But business has dried up. bit.ly/2PeFLzi

2/ Locals say that a few months ago, hundreds of migrants — and sometimes well over 1,000 — were passing through the town every day.

Not anymore. bit.ly/2PeFLzi

3/ In the wake of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, fewer Central American migrants are making the harrowing journey to the U.S.-Mexico border.

A few months ago, traffic began to slow — and then it all but stopped. bit.ly/2PeFLzi

4/ Migration can be a fickle business, so this isn’t the first time a dip in “tourism” has hit the local economy. But this downturn is different.

And locals are blaming Donald Trump. bit.ly/2PeFLzi

5/ Experts and people on the ground here say there are two big reasons the traffic died down.

The first is the administration's “Remain in Mexico” program, which requires people to wait out their asylum cases south of the U.S. border. bit.ly/2PeFLzi

6/ The program has sent tens of thousands of migrants right back to Mexican border towns, where danger and squalid conditions often await them.

That dramatically increases the risk — and reduces the payoff — of making the journey north. bit.ly/2PeFLzi

7/ The second reason?

President Trump’s threat to slap tariffs on Mexico unless it cracked down on migrants crossing through the country on their way to the United States. bit.ly/2PeFLzi

8/ “If there are no migrants, there are no sales,” Marixa Garcia Ramos said inside her empty restaurant. “That's to say the economy of La Técnica is the migrants. If there are migrants, there is business. If there are no migrants, there is none." bit.ly/2PeFLzi

9/ Read @byjayroot’s full report on the country’s shifting migration patterns and how they’ve affected La Técnica: bit.ly/2PeFLzi

@byjayroot 10/10 This reporting was made possible by Texas Tribune members.

If investigative coverage of immigration and border issues matters to you, will you step up today and support our ability to stick with stories like this for the long haul? texastribune.org/give