President Trump issued a stark warning Thursday to Mexico to shut down “huge” new migrant caravans making their way toward the U.S., or else face massive new tariffs on its goods.
Caravans developed in the weeks before the election, which some took as an early signal that smugglers have begun convincing would-be migrants that Democrats will find ways to weaken Mr. Trump’s stiff border controls.
“With the perceived loss by the Republicans in the Midterms … the INVASION of our Country is taking place again,” Mr. Trump said on social media.
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He said “many of the people” in the caravans are rejects from their own countries, who he said the U.S. will not accept.
“MEXICO MUST STOP THEM, NOW, and if they do not do so, the Tariffs on Mexico will be IMMEDIATELY DOUBLED,” the president wrote in a Thursday morning post.
He also called out the incoming “very liberal new governor” in Texas, Gina Hinojosa, saying she has been “informed” of the president’s concerns over the caravan.
He vowed “no leniency.”
Dating back to his first term, Mr. Trump has been a firm believer that Mexico can do more to stem the flow of people from south of its own border who transit north toward the U.S.
In 2019, he used a threat of tariffs to get Mexico’s cooperation on allowing U.S. border authorities to push illegal immigrants back across the boundary to await their immigration court hearings from Mexico, rather than running free in the U.S.
He also campaigned in 2016 on a promise to make Mexico pay for his border wall. America’s southern neighbor has never cut that check, though Mr. Trump argues Mexico has effectively paid in other ways, including better terms of trade for the U.S.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum told reporters in Mexico on Thursday that authorities have already dispersed a caravan of about 600 migrants in Chiapas, and they were negotiating with another caravan of Hondurans.
She said they do not use force to disband caravans but have convinced the migrants that their chances of entering the U.S. are nonexistent.
“Since President Trump took office, no migrant caravan has reached the northern border,” she said.
Massive caravans were common in the previous decade. Migrants banded together to make their way toward the U.S., convinced that lax border policies would mean they could show up, make iffy asylum claims and enter.
Mr. Trump upended that cycle upon taking office last year.
He restricted asylum claims at the border and expanded detention capacity for those who still try to cross.
The result is that no migrants have been caught and released by the Border Patrol at the southern border in more than a year. Under President Joseph R. Biden, the catch-and-release figure could top 100,000 in a single month.
With little chance of being released into the U.S., migrants had largely stopped coming altogether.
Mexico’s ambassador to the U.S., Roberto Lazzeri, said Thursday that his government has used the strict American border to deter would-be migrants.
“The results are visible at the border: a historic 97% reduction in encounters, reaching their lowest level since 1959,” he said. “That reflects Mexico’s work every day alongside our U.S. counterparts, and that cooperation will continue.”
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