Top US officials arrived in Mexico Wednesday to find a “defiant, fuming” Mexican government refusing to accept President Donald Trump’s tougher immigration and deportation policies.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson landed in Mexico City on Wednesday afternoon. He was due to be joined by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly later for talks the White House said would “walk through” the implementation of Trump’s immigration orders. Kelly signed the guidelines issued by his department on Monday. Mexico’s lead negotiator with the Trump administration, Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray, said there was no way Mexico would accept the new rules, which among other things seek to deport non-Mexicans to Mexico.
Quoted by the WSJ, Mexico’s Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said at a ceremony on Wednesday “I want to make it emphatically clear that neither Mexico’s government or the Mexican people have any reason to accept provisions that have been unilaterally imposed by one government on the other.” He added that “we won’t accept it because we don’t have to,” he added, in reference to U.S. plans to return illegal migrants to Mexico, regardless of their nationality.
“We also have control of our borders and we will exercise it fully,” he said, adding that Mexico was prepared to go the United Nations to defend the freedoms and rights of Mexicans under international law.
He said the issue would dominate the talks, taking place on Wednesday and Thursday. Mexico will insist that the United States proves the nationality of any person it wants to deport to Mexico, he said. Videgaray’s declaration spelled trouble for Tillerson and Kelly, who a White House official said were sent to “talk through the implementation” of Mr. Trump’s guidelines.
As Reuters adds, Mexico reacted with anger on Wednesday to what one official called “hostile” new U.S. immigration guidelines hours before senior Trump administration envoys began arriving in Mexico City for talks on the volatile issue. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security unveiled plans on Tuesday to consider almost all illegal immigrants subject to deportation, and will seek to send many of them to Mexico if they entered the United States from there, regardless of nationality.
Roberto Campa, who heads the human rights department of the Interior Ministry, said the plan to deport non-Mexicans to Mexico was “hostile” and “unacceptable.” Senators for the leading leftist opposition party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution, said Tillerson and Kelly were not welcome in the country and they urged Pena Nieto not to meet with them.
Ahead of the trip by Messrs. Tillerson and Kelly, senior administration officials sought to play down the rift with Mexico, saying Mr. Tillerson and Mr. Kelly aimed to clarify U.S. policy and find ways to work together with the country.
“This trip is focusing on how we can build a constructive relationship, work through our common interests on security, on migration, on the economic elements of the relationship,” a senior administration official said. “The wall is just one part of a broader relationship that we have.” Another administration official said the visit aimed to “help our counterparts in Mexico understand clearly what is happening and how we see things, and not just relying on rumor or stories that they hear elsewhere.”
In Washington, White House spokesman Sean Spicer described U.S.-Mexico ties as healthy and robust and said he expected a “great discussion.” “I think the relationship with Mexico is phenomenal right now,” Spicer told reporters.
Homeland Security’s guidance to immigration agents is part of a broader border security and immigration enforcement plan in executive orders that the Republican president signed on Jan. 25. In Guatemala on Wednesday, Kelly told Guatemalans the immigration crackdown ordered by Trump meant undocumented immigrants would be caught and sent back quickly, advising them to stay at home. He denied the administration was embarking on mass deportations.
Mexico’s agenda at the talks on Thursday includes border infrastructure, deportation strategies, Central American migration, narcotics, arms trafficking and terrorism, and the North American Free Trade Agreement, a senior official with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
via http://ift.tt/2lITbWh Tyler Durden