TAPACHULA, Mexico (AFP)— Days before Donald Trump returns to the White House with a vow of mass deportations, migrants in Mexico say they are increasingly nervous about whether their asylum appointments will be honoured.

Some of the appointments with US authorities are scheduled for days after Trump takes office on January 20, or even on Inauguration Day itself.

“There is a kind of sense of despair,” Yusmelis Villalobos, a Venezuelan with a January 23 appointment, told AFP from the southern Mexican city of Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala.

“It’s no secret that sometimes when Donald Trump says things, he does them,” Dayana Hernandez, a 36-year-old Venezuelan said.

Nicolas Maduro’s inauguration in Caracas last week for a highly contested third term as president has added to the dilemma facing migrants from her country, Hernandez said.

“We really don’t know what to do, whether to go back, keep going forwards — we really don’t know,” she added.

Trump has accused immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country” and threatened to carry out the largest deportation of migrants in American history.

During his first term in the White House from 2017 to 2021, Trump put heavy pressure on Mexico to turn back a tide of migrants from Central America.

Hernandez appealed to the president-elect not to kill her hopes of reaching the United States.

“Just as there are bad people, there are good people who want to work,” she said.

Hernandez was one of hundreds of migrants waiting in Tapachula this week for permission to travel to the border to request asylum, after having made an appointment through the US government’s CBP One mobile app.

Without a permit, they risk being detained by Mexican authorities while on the move.

But Mexican authorities are struggling to deal with the crowds waiting near the city’s immigration office.

Some migrants, frustrated with the wait, have set off on foot in caravans from Tapachula in recent weeks, braving hunger, exhaustion and the cold.

Hundreds of thousands of people fleeing violence and poverty travel across Mexico every year for the US border, some of them paying people smugglers to transport them in trucks.

CBP One was introduced by outgoing Democratic President Joe Biden to curb illegal migration.

Although making an appointment through the app does not guarantee that migrants can remain in the United States, it allows them to obtain a work permit while they continue their process there.

Anais Rojas, a 20-year-old Venezuelan travelling with her young son, is also worried about whether her appointment for January 23 will be canceled.

“Thank God we got the appointment, but of course things are still uncertain. We don’t know what will happen,” she said.

But Rojas said she did not “feel hate” toward Trump, despite his anti-immigrant rhetoric.

If his policies succeed in boosting the US economy, that could be good for migrants, she added.

“There’s a reason he won,” Rojas said.

“If the economy is better, it benefits us too.”