I am thankful every day that we have a businessman in the White House who brilliantly understands how to leverage U.S. economic power to achieve national security objectives.
While remaining under the threat of punishing U.S. tariffs, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador (aka AMLO) is strictly enforcing migrant blockades to stop the unlawful travel of Central American migrants to the U.S. border.
(Via AP) […] Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said he believes Mexico’s strategy of cracking down on illegal migration with a National Guard deployment, investment in Central America and allowing the U.S. to make more asylum seekers wait in Mexico is enough to avert President Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on all Mexican imports.Ebrard is scheduled to meet with U.S. officials Tuesday at the White House to review the progress.
Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador, a leftist who took office Dec. 1 promising better treatment of migrants, instead has embraced the fight against migrant smuggling.
In recent weeks, he has seldom mentioned the U.S. pressure and depicts the crackdown on migrants as a struggle to defend Mexican laws. His administration has taken a tough line against hundreds of African migrants waiting in the southern city of Tapachula for transit visas that Mexico no longer hands out.“We will not budge,” he said after the Africans protested, “because the recent events in Tapachula aim to make Mexico yield and oblige us to give out certificates so migrants can get into the United States. We cannot do that. It isn’t our job.”He said migrant caravans once tolerated by Mexico were the work of human traffickers, and effectively ended them.“All of these people who traffic with migrants’ needs for jobs, safety and welfare, they are committing a crime and they will be punished,” López Obrador said last week. “We are already doing this in Mexico, without violating human rights. We are ensuring there isn’t anarchy, disorder.”Migrant-rights activists say López Obrador is simply dressing up the fact that he yielded to Trump’s pressure tactics.Mexico has raided freight trains that migrants ride north, and pulled thousands off buses and out of the freight compartments of trucks. The government has warned bus and taxi drivers they could lose their permits if they transport migrants. (read more)
