Mexico Vows All-Out Border Crackdown While Lacking a Trump Goal
Trump said that migration through the U.S. southern border has already slowed dramatically following his deal with Mexico.
(Bloomberg) -- Mexico is taking major steps to stop illegal border crossings even as U.S. President Donald Trump hasn’t set a specific goal that would lift his tariff threat, the nation’s undersecretary for North America said.
"There was no discussion of numbers," Jesus Seade told Bloomberg TV’s Erik Schatzker in an interview Thursday. "Just a good faith effort to do certain things, which we are doing. So let’s wait and see. But we are certainly making progress and have every confidence that will do the trick."
Mexico now has a more coherent task-force than before to run its immigration policy and to organize a crackdown on undocumented migrants at its southern border with Guatemala, Seade said.
Trump said last week that migration through the U.S. southern border has already slowed dramatically following his deal with the Mexican government. Last month he threatened to impose tariffs on all Mexican imports before reaching the agreement, where Mexico pledged to deploy about 6,000 of its national guard to detain migrants traveling north.
Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard has said his country has 45 days to show the U.S. that additional measures aren’t needed under the agreement. He released a supplementary deal Friday that said more actions may be necessary if the U.S. isn’t satisfied. But neither country has set specific detention or deportation goals on either side of the border as a sign that the deal is working, leaving the door open for Trump to renew threats if he so chooses.
Seade said he sees U.S. passage of the overhauled North American trade deal, known as USMCA, by end of July. He said Canada’s approval would come around the same time, after Mexico’s Senate ratified it Wednesday. He added that a national security tax on autos being prepared by Trump doesn’t appear to include Mexico among countries that will have tariffs imposed.
--With assistance from Eric Martin.
To contact the reporters on this story: Nacha Cattan in Mexico City at ncattan@bloomberg.net;Erik Schatzker in New York at eschatzker@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Carlos Manuel Rodriguez at carlosmr@bloomberg.net, Robert Jameson
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