Daniel González travelled more than 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) from Venezuela to North America, hoping to cross the border to the United States and realize his lifelong dream.

But the plans for this Venezuelan national vanished with the tightening of immigration policy during Donald Trump's second term as president.

“I wanted to achieve a dream,” the 22-year-old said. “My dream was to go to the United States with my family and start a business,” he added.

González is one of hundreds of migrants whose aspirations to start over in the land of opportunity have been thwarted.

Amid increased deportations and tighter controls by the United States, many have had to return to their countries of origin or try their luck in other Latin American nations.

González arrived in Chile for the first time in 2020. His journey was part of a massive wave of migration which Venezuela has been experiencing since 2019, mostly people fleeing the political, economic, and social crisis ravaging their homeland.

Four years later, González decided, along with his partner and other family members, to travel to the United States, where he believed he would have a better chance of starting his own business and saving some money.

They left Chile on July 2, 2024, and crossed Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia.

In the remote Colombian town of Necoclí, they took a boat that dropped them off at the gates of the inhospitable Tapón del Darién, the tropical jungle on the border between Colombia and Panama that has served in recent years as a human corridor for thousands of migrants on their journey to the United States.

It took them three days to cross the jungle. He said they were robbed during their journey.

The most difficult part was in Mexico, and he recalled intense days of walking without food, clothing, or water.

When he and his family reached Mexico City in December, they hoped to get an appointment for a possible temporary permit to live in the U.S. under a program by former president Joe Biden that expanded legal avenues for entering the country in an attempt to discourage illegal crossings.

As the weeks went by, Trump came to power, and the American dream for him faded.

“We never got the appointment,” he said.

Since April, González has rebuilt his life in Chile.

He lives with his family in Lampa, a commune north of Santiago, and works as a mechanic, and some nights he also helps out at a bakery.

His new dream now lies in Chile. He is not alone.

The Venezuelan community has grown exponentially in recent years in Chile and has become one of the main recipient countries for immigration in Latin America.

“In the 1992 census, when this began to happen, the migrant population as a percentage of the total national population was 0.8%, and now it is 8.8% in the latest census,” said María Fernanda Stang, researcher at the Center for Social Sciences and Youth Research at Silva Henríquez Catholic University.

“That increase has been much more significant in recent years,” she added.

The foreign population in Chile, which has a total population of around 18 million, reached 1.6 million people last year, more than double the figure recorded in 2017.

Venezuelans make up the largest community, representing 41.6% of all immigrants registered in the 2024 census.

Uber driver Luis Sánchez said that working in Chile, a person can do well compared to Venezuela.

Sánchez also had hoped to “work and get ahead” in the United States.

He left in August 2024 and crossed the continent on foot, by bus, and by boat.

He arrived in Monterrey, the capital of the Mexican state of Nuevo León, which borders Texas and has become a transit hub for migrants seeking to move north.

“I waited the entire time I was there in Mexico for the appointment, and it never came," he said.

On March 20, he decided to return to Chile, where he rebuilt his life driving the streets of Santiago.

Both of the Venezuelan men are part of the growing phenomenon of reverse migration and reflect the “adaptive” profile of migrants moving across Latin America, the UN noted in a report published last week.

“Migrants' decision-making remained... fluid, and families and individuals continued to navigate an increasingly complex and restrictive mobility landscape in Latin America,” the document said.

In August, the agency had already warned of the “unprecedented change” in migration in the region, a phenomenon that is a direct reflection of “transit restrictions in the Darien jungle, along with the tightening of migration policies in the United States.”

AP video by Mauricio Cuevas and Sebastian Moscoso