Mexico has 45 days to stem the flow of Central American migrants – including many families seeking asylum in the United States – passing through this country or U.S. President Donald Trump is likely to reach for his stick once more.
Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard and White House negotiators reached a last-minute agreement that will see 6,000 members of Mexico’s newly formed National Guard deployed at the Guatemala border in a bid to halt the migrant wave.
Had the agreement not been reached, Trump was poised to slap a five percent tariff on all goods entering the United States. He had vowed to increase the tariff incrementally to 25 percent if Mexico still failed to take action on the migrant issue.
Ebrard said the results of the plan will be evaluated in 45 days to see if further measures are needed.
Mexico has balked at Trump’s wish to have a “safe third country” agreement, in which migrants must apply for asylum in the first country they arrive at. Although Ebrard said he is convinced the measures agreed upon to halt the flow of migrants will succeed, he admitted that a “regional asylum agreement” – perhaps involving Guatemala, Panama or Brazil – could be instigated if the results are inadequate within the 45-day period.
In some confusing tweets, Trump alluded to this as a “secret” part of the deal, saying that it “will be revealed in the not too distant future and will need a vote by Mexico’s Legislative body … if for any reason the approval is not forthcoming, Tariffs will be reinstated.”
Ebrard has insisted there is no secret part of the deal other than a commitment to evaluate the situation in the specified time frame. He conceded, however, that legislators would need to approve a safe third country or regional asylum agreement.
According to a joint declaration by both governments, Mexico will also take “decisive action to dismantle human smuggling and trafficking organizations” and accept the return of even more migrants awaiting the adjudication of their asylum claims in the United States. There are currently around 11,000 Central American migrants on the Mexican side of the border waiting to hear about their claims. The wait for many will be long. Some have been given dates for audiences with U.S. judges in almost a year’s time. Some observers on the ground say that Mexico’s border towns simply do not have the infrastructure to care for such numbers adequately.
Most experts on Mexican immigration matters say even the massive deployment of troops won’t prevent migrants from trying to get to the United States. “The large caravans may stop but migration will continue,” said Ernesto Castanedo, an activist at the Buen Pastor refuge in Tapachula, Chiapas.
News reports suggest many migrants are fearful the new measures will make them the target of abuses by security forces. They believe newly recruited National Guard officers will lack the training to deal with migrant families in a humane manner.
On taking office last year, President Manuel Andres Lopez Obrador promised to respect the rights of migrants, offer them humanitarian visas, the possibility of employment and – basically – allow many of them safe passage through the country via large “caravans.” This policy probably contributed to an increase in migrant flow, but even this week amid the current crisis and as he prepared to send a massive military force to the southern border, the president still insisted that the rights of migrants will be rigorously upheld.
Both Lopez Obrador and Trump hailed the agreement as a victory for their nations, although they marked it in different ways.
Trump celebrated in typical fashion, with a string of bloviated tweets, including blasting a New York Times report that claimed the agreement had already been in the works for several months. “As soon as I put tariffs on the table it was done. It took two days,” he boasted during a call-in to CNBC. (The negotiations actually lasted for ten days.)_
Lopez Obrador, meanwhile, convened a rally in Tijuana under the banner “Unidad en Defensa de la Dignidad de México y en favor de la Amistad con el Pueblo de los Estados Unidos” (Unity in Defense of the Dignity of Mexico and in Favor of the Friendship with the United States). Noting that “politics had triumphed over confrontation,” Lopez Obrador recognized Trump’s willingness to negotiate, while stressing that Mexico will maintain its principle of not allowing any foreign power to compromise its sovereignty.
For some Mexicans, however, the agreement does just that. A question raised by some commentators is whether yielding to Trump’s threats constitutes another historic capitulation to the United States or if it is a smart, logical reaction to the immigration problem in Mexico that at some point in time would require addressing.
Writer and broadcaster Denise Dresser argued that “Mexico is becoming the United States’ backyard, where dirty clothes are washed and trash is dumped … Trump won’t have to worry about building his wall, Mexico is doing it for him … we will be responsible for hunting, stopping and deporting (migrants). We will do with Hondurans, Salvadorians and Guatemalans what the United States has done with us: criminalise and persecute them. Perhaps we save free trade by accepting this new deal, but at the cost of dignity and harmony.”
Most south-of-the-border politicians and experts agree that controlling the influx of migrants at Mexico’s southern border through the use of a massive security force is only a short-term fix and does not address the core issue — the appalling conditions endured by many Central Americans in their home countries.
The final paragraph of the joint U.S./Mexico declaration notes that, “The United States and Mexico will lead in working with regional and international partners to build a more prosperous and secure Central America to address the underlying causes of migration, so that citizens of the region can build better lives for themselves and their families at home.”
While both Ebrard and Lopez Obrador have stressed the importance of following through with the regional Comprehensive Development Plan – launched by Mexico in concert with Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras last year – sadly this part of the agreement has not been mentioned by Trump and his colleagues in their public comments about the deal.