Power shift reflects new Mexican hard line - Government gets tough on immigration after Trump tariff threat - article courtesy of Joshua Schneider
Power shift reflects new Mexican hard line - Government gets tough on immigration after Trump tariff
threat
BY CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN ASSOCIATED PRESS MEXICO CITY |
Under growing pressure from the Trump administration, Mexico’s immigration policy has moved from one promising to help migrants to another characterized by militarized enforcement that has support of the country’s foreign secretary.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has faced pointed criticism
from the left about the change in direction, but Foreign Secretary Marcelo
Ebrard made clear this week after a meeting at the White House that Mexico
plans to stick with the get-tough approach that has succeeded in reducing the
flow of Central American migrants to the U.S. border.
“We haven’t done anything that we should be ashamed of,”
Mr. Ebrard said Tuesday in Washington. “We would never do that.”
Not everyone agrees. More than 100 organizations from
Mexico, Central America and the United States signed a letter this week
denouncing some of Mexico’s immigration enforcement practices as “arbitrary,
indiscriminate and therefore illegal.”
“In these 90 days, Mexico has become President Trump’s
border wall,” the letter added.
The United Nations has also warned that thousands of
migrants have been left in vulnerable situations, while other experts have
characterized policies as improvised and said migrants will face more abuse.
The debate over Mexico’s approach to immigration comes as
a wave of migrants continues to try to cross the country to reach the United
States.
Following a threat by President Trump to impose crippling
tariffs on all Mexican imports in late May, Mexico stepped up measures to
contain and dissuade migrants who say they are fleeing violence and poverty
further south in Central America.
Thousands of members of a newly created National Guard
have been deployed to run highway checkpoints on migrant routes. Bus companies have
been warned not to sell tickets to passengers without documents.
The head of the country’s immigration agency, a sociologist and academic who studied immigration, was replaced by the head of the federal prison system. More than 40,000 migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. have been sent back to Mexico to wait out the process.
State offices of Mexico’s immigration agency were given quotas
for the number of migrant detentions they needed to make, said two people with
knowledge of the situation.
Since the tariff threat, the new face of Mexico’s
immigration policy has been Mr. Ebrard, who shuttled between Mexico City and
Washington trying to head off the tariffs. Interior Secretary Olga Sanchez
Cordero, whose ministry oversees the immigration agency, just as quickly became
invisible on the issue.
International organizations that deal with the Mexican
government on immigration issues suddenly found the authority that had resided
in the interior ministry was being consolidated in Mr. Ebrard’s foreign
ministry.
The power shift has also vested more power in the
military, which has provided most of the command structure and personnel of the
new National Guard, even though that force is technically under civilian
command.
The military’s profile has grown within Mexico’s immigration
agency as well, wit height generals or vice admirals — three of them retired —
named as the top immigration officials in key states such as Quintana Roo, Veracruz, Jalisco
and Coahuila.
For some the turning point was Mexico’s acceptance of the
“Remain in Mexico” policy under which the U.S. has sent more than 40,000 migrants
back to Mexico to await the processing of their asylum applications. Mr. Ebrard has said the program allowed Mexico to avoid signing a “safe third
country” agreement with the U.S., which would have made those migrants seek
asylum in Mexico rather than the U.S.
But with the U.S. Supreme Court’s order Wednesday allowing
the Trump administration to block any migrants other than Mexicans and Canadians
from applying for asylum at the U.S. border, Mexico faces the same result that
a safe third country agreement would have created.
That has the potential to multiply the number of migrants
stuck in dangerous Mexican border cities, where they will likely end up paying
smugglers to help them cross illegally or become easy prey to organized
criminal groups.
But Mexico’s leader shows no signs of doubt about his approach.
