As seniors from the Trump administration prepare to arrive in Mexico, the Mexican government reacted with anger to Trump’s announcement of new U.S. immigration guidelines.
President Trump shared new plans to enforce immigration rules more vigorously against undocumented migrants, which could lead to mass deportations of not just Mexicans to Mexico, but citizens of other Latin American countries.
“I want to say clearly and emphatically that the government of Mexico and the Mexican people do not have to accept provisions that one government unilaterally wants to impose on the other,” Videgaray told reporters at the Foreign Ministry.
“We also have control of our borders and we will exercise it fully,” he said, adding that the country was prepared to approach the United Nations to defend the rights of Mexicans under international law.
Trump has made his view on Mexican migrants clear throughout his election campaign and Presidency.
“I said [from] day one, they’re going out. Or they’re being put in prison, but for the most part, get them the hell out of here. Bring them back to where they came from,” The US President said during his election campaign in Florida.
Head of the Human Rights department of the Interior Ministry, Roberto Campa, said Trump’s plan to deport non-Mexicans to Mexico was “hostile” and “unacceptable.”
Mexico’s agenda at the talks on with Trump’s administration on Thursday will include border infrastructure, deportation strategies, Central American migration, narcotics, arms trafficking and terrorism.
So far, the US-Mexico relationship is not looking promising. In January, Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto abruptly cancelled a trip to Washington after President Trump sent out a tweet suggesting it was better not to come “if Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall”.
According to research fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington, Brandon Capece, relations between the US and Mexico are at the lowest point since the 1980s.
“Even renegotiating Nafta is something that can be mutually beneficial for all three nations involved, but only if Trump can move beyond his misperceived notion that the United States is somehow the victim in this relationship,” Capece said. “That being said, given the failure of the Trump administration to articulate a clear foreign policy and their reluctance to rely on experts within the Washington foreign policy establishment, it is unlikely that this trip in and of itself will calm nerves in either Washington or Mexico City.”
“That being said, given the failure of the Trump administration to articulate a clear foreign policy and their reluctance to rely on experts within the Washington foreign policy establishment, it is unlikely that this trip in and of itself will calm nerves in either Washington or Mexico City.”