On the surface, and in diplomatic terms, it was more like business as usual as U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and John Kelly made their first visits of their tenures to Mexico this week.
The respectful and discreet language used by the two U.S. officials to describe talks with their Mexican counterparts may have set a dignified tone to the proceedings, but their words belied the deep fractures that have dogged the bilateral relationship ever since Donald Trump triumphed in last year’s presidential election.
Speaking following a meeting with Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray, Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong and Secretary of National Defense Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, Tillerson tried to concentrate on the positives, calling the summit “forward-looking, focusing on common interests that would advance security and economic well-being.”
Steering clear of contentious issues such as immigration policy, the border wall and free trade, Tillerson admitted that “from time to time we will have differences,” but stressed that both parties “listened closely and carefully to each other as we respectfully and patiently raised our respective concerns.”
Kelly, on the other hand, was at pains to stress that the Trump administration’s new immigration enforcement initiative will not lead to “mass deportations,” and that the U.S. military will not be used to round up and expel undocumented foreigners. His comments, however, seemed at odds with his president who, earlier in the day at the White House, referred to the new deportation policy as “a military operation.”
Both Osorio Chong and Videgaray left reporters in no doubt of the Mexican government’s strong opposition to strategies that seek to increase the number of deportations, and the resolve in this country to defend the rights of its citizens residing in the United States whose lives may affected by hostile policies.
Osorio Chong described a suggestion from the Trump administration that the United States send all deported Central Americans to Mexico rather than their homelands as “totally unacceptable.”