Mexico and Canada started the noise of activities on their borders with the US in showing their willingness to tighten migrants on the eve of the deadline in which President Donald Trump threatened to impose criminal tariffs.
In the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez on the US border, workers started filling a 300 -meter tunnel this week, smuggling migrants to Texas. A 1.8 -meter tunnel, with electric cable and ventilation, ran under Río Bravo, also known as Rio Grande, from the Central Juárez, next to the main highway. US agents said They discovered it earlier this month.
Mexico set up a large, air-conditioned temporary deportation shelter, while President Claudia Sheinbaum said some non-mexicans were among the thousands of migrants that Mexico had returned to Trump’s first week. Earlier, she suggested that her country could accept non-mexical migrants as an offer to Trump.
Canada has deployed new leased Black Hawk Patrol helicopters, additional dogs and 60 drones on the border with the US as part of the response to Trump’s requests for the two countries to suppress the entry of illegal migrants and fentanis.
Canadian public security minister David McGuinty said their efforts “involve political reach, officially reach and operational reach,” including conversations this week with Trump’s border Tsar Tom Homan.
Officers in Mexico City and Ottawa rushed to show the action after Trump threatened to impose a 25 percent on their exports before February 1.
If they are implemented, endangered tariffs would send both economies to the recession, increasing the supply chains in the industry from the car on electronics and encouraged US consumer prices, analysts said.
Trump briefly announced Criminal tariffs on Colombia last week after refusing to accept two military aircraft carrying deportation but raised them when Bogota quickly retired.
He also declared a national emergency situation at the US-Mexico border, sent 1,500 additional troops and canceled the legal entry paths created by his predecessor Joe Biden, including an asylum application application.
The measures left thousands of migrants, including Argenis, a 26-year-old Venezuelan who hoped he would reunite with his brother in Texas, stranded in Mexican border cities.
“The videos have appeared on the Tictok people who hug their family. I was so excited to hug my family,” he told FT.
“[Then] I was depressed. I even deleted my WhatsApp. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. ”
Trump put the US southern border at the center of all three of his presidential campaigns, passing last year against a record level of illegal immigration under Biden.
Sheinbaum said on Monday that migration officials from both countries held several virtual meetings and reached agreements without offering further details.
Mexico returned about 4,000 migrants in Trump’s first week, which progressed from approximately 3,700 weeks he seized last year, according to the Government’s data.
Mexico has been increasing the implementation of immigration for more than a decade for more than a decade. Last year, he stepped up checks and detained further across the country, focusing on the ride of foreign migrants south.
Mexico is also under pressure due to drug -supply cartel, including a deadly opioid fentanyl in the US. Suppression of that trade is difficult, with combined killings and disappearances in the country near the record high.
Security Minister Omar García Harfuch said on Tuesday that more than 10,000 people had been detained since October for a crime with high influence such as murder and violent robbery, and more than 90 tons of drugs.
The situation on the Canadian border with the US is different from Mexico. Since June last year, US authorities have been finding about 100,000 people per month exceeding Mexico illegally, towards us Customs And border protection, but at the northern border with Canada, the figure was about 15,000 a month.
Canada said that only about 1 percent of the fental that enters the US is transported across its border. But that did not prevent Trump from threatening him, along with Mexico. In recent months, both Mexico and Canada have announced a large bust of drugs.
The Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, who will travel to Washington DC on Wednesday to meet State Secretary Marco Rubio, said she would talk this week with Mexico, British and EU colleagues.
“At the center of my conversations with my British colleagues and my European colleagues, it will be a question of how to answer tariffs,” she said on Monday.
In December, Canada announced an additional $ 1.3 billion ($ 900 million) to strengthen the safety of the border and immigration system. It increased the patrols and control along the border, which extend almost 9,000 KM per land and water.
Xavi Delgado, of the Canadian Institute at Washington Center in Washington, said: “This was an invitation to wake up for Ottawa. Trump expressed frustration with Canada because he was now taking a healthy for granted.”
Mexico and Canada lobbied the legislators and others in the president’s circle, claiming that the tariffs would be a “loss” situation for all three countries.
Despite Trump’s action, some migrants in Mexico are hoping. “I’m thinking about quietly, waiting,” said Gabriel, a 23-year-old from Venezuela, on the border. “I feel that we will be able to cross legally at all times or something good will happen.”
