Mexico detained nearly half a million migrants headed for the US in the last quarter Reuters
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican security forces have detained about 475,000 illegal migrants since October, authorities said on Friday, as US President-elect Donald Trump threatened Mexico with tariffs if it did not stop illegal migrants from crossing their border.
Almost half a million migrants detained between October 1 and December 26 suggest an intensification of measures towards the end of the year.
Around 900,000 migrants have been detained since the beginning of the year, the government announced earlier this month.
“We think it’s a model that works, that can always be improved, but that has responded very satisfactorily to this (migration) phenomenon,” Foreign Affairs Minister Juan Ramon de la Fuente said on Friday.
Speaking alongside President Claudia Sheinbaum at her regular press conference, he said the number of migrants detained at the shared border had fallen by 81 percent in mid-December compared to a year earlier.
Israel Ibarra, an immigration researcher at Colegio de la Frontera Norte, said the increase in detentions was partly due to “a commitment to reduce the transit of people moving through Mexico and into the United States” that Sheinbaum made in a recent conversation with Trump.
The conversation between Sheinbaum and Trump took place in late November after the Republican threatened to impose 25 percent tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada if those countries did not stop the flow of drugs, mainly fentanyl, and migrants.
