One narrative that has recently emerged from the echo chambers of the Trump Show advances the dubious notion that as a direct result of Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on Mexico, the Mexican government is now suddenly escalating its efforts to restrict irregular migrant flows through Mexico to the U.S.-Mexico border ahead of Trump’s inauguration.
As reported in one Fox News article, for example, the “Mexican government is working hard to break up migrant caravans trying to make the treacherous journey north to the U.S. ahead of President-elect Trump’s inauguration in less than two weeks’ time.”
This and other similar explanations appear to misleadingly pair Trump’s impending inauguration with an intensification in Mexico’s efforts to divert migrant flows away from the U.S.-Mexico border.
I am not saying that Mexico hasn’t been attentive to Trump’s threats. In fact, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s phone conversation with Trump in late November in which she explained that Mexico was already doing its part to reduce migrant flows through Mexico was clearly an attempt to assuage Trump on this particular issue.
And, as reported by Reuters, it is also clear that Mexican security forces have detained approximately 475,000 irregular migrants during the interval spanning from October 1st through December 26th, and, yes, I’ll concede that this does represent a dramatic spike in apprehensions for the last quarter of 2024.
But, I’d like to make this next point abundantly clear. Mexican security forces were simply continuing the interdiction efforts that had been initiated and largely accomplished during the Biden Administration.
A recent El País article is particularly instructive in framing the diplomatic efforts of the Biden Administration that led to the current reality at the U.S.-Mexico border. According to Doris Meissner, director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute who is quoted extensively in the article, Mexico did intensify its interdiction efforts, but it did so about a year ago in January of 2024 following a high-level meeting in Mexico City between U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, and former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
In other words, Mexico’s strategic cooperation had been secured long ago even before the dreaded prospect of a second Trump term became a reality. In fact, it had been secured even before Trump thwarted the passage of a historic bipartisan border security bill in June because he realized that its passage would have, in the words of one opinion columnist, rendered “his entire campaign irrelevant.”
Following the demise of the bill, President Joe Biden, left with few, if any, viable alternatives, took a number of executive actions that, coupled with the ongoing interdiction efforts of the Mexican government, would culminate in the dramatic decrease in levels of apprehensions currently being registered at the Mexican border.
Unfortunately, both the Biden Administration and the Harris campaign failed to effectively promote this narrative and capitalize on this significant diplomatic victory and, as a result, failed to neutralize immigration as a campaign issue.
Of course, the current reality of the Mexican border will not prevent Trump, who is not exactly known for his fidelity to the truth, from misappropriating, otherwise known as stealing, the credit for the “mostly calm and stable” situation that currently exists at the border.
It will also not prevent Trump from continuing to target Mexico. The reality of the Mexican border may ultimately not even matter. Maybe it never really mattered. As noted in an article appearing in The New Republic, Trump’s MAGA operatives have “gotten the memo” and, surprise, the “enemy” is still Mexico. In fact, as noted in the article, Trump’s “propagandists” are already engaged in “laying the groundwork to cast Mexico as a major scapegoat for U.S. social problems, thus justifying in advance whatever Trump throws at Mexico in the way of threats and bullying and tariffs and whatever else.”
