Mexican anger at US tax plan TELESUR
Threat to stop refugee control
AMEXICAN minister has said his government would stop its US-backed border controls at the southern border if US President Donald Trump follows through on his border tax promise.
Trump’s plan to impose heavy border taxes on Mexico could see the the suspension of a security programme with Washington at Mexico’s southern border, which stops immigrants and refugees fleeing conflicts in Central America from coming into Mexico as they try to seek asylum in the US.
“There is so much at stake for the interest of the US as a country,” Mexico’s Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo told the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail in an interview on Saturday.
Mexico has been accused of doing the US’s “dirty work” when it comes to combatting war and immigration in return for cash.
The minister warned that Trump’s rhetoric against his country and its people could see the Mexican government less willing to “keep on co-operating in things that are at the heart of (US) national security issues”.
“You cannot ask me to (accept poor) conditions in terms of trade and then request my help to manage migration issues from other nations or the prosecution of criminal activities and narcotics,” he added.
For the past three years Mexico has virtually locked its southern border as part of Programa Frontera Sur initiated by President Barack Obama in order to stop the flow of refugees from Central America.
Washington gave Mexico US$86 million (R1.1 billion) in equipment and training in 2014 in order to set up border controls along its 4 828km southern border and crack down on immigrant flows from countries like El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Mexico detained 330 000 Central Americans in the last two years.
In recent years Mexico has also become a hotspot for refugees fleeing conflicts in Africa and the Middle East who are wishing to go to the the US. Last year, at least 7 500 people from Africa came into Mexico according to government figures.
As part of the security co-operation between the US and Mexico, US agents are stationed in detention centres across Mexico in order to vet refugees from Muslim-majority countries who are applying for asylum in the US.
However, it is not clear whether threats to suspend the programme would materialise in the event of a Trump border tax, which his administration suggested would pay for his wall with Mexico.
One of the main promises of Trump’s presidential campaign was building a wall along the border with Mexico in order to stop the flow of what Trump calls criminals, drug dealers and rapists from entering the US. But, in fact, over the past few years more Mexicans have been leaving the US than coming in, according to official statements.
Humberto Roque Villanueva, deputy secretary of Population, Migration and Religious Affairs at the Mexican Secretariat of the Interior, told Mexico’s La Jornada that while his government has been accused of doing “the dirty work” of the US, the country would not abandon border controls at the southern border over Trump’s hostile policies for “legal, human and crime-prevention reasons”.