US won’t have mass deportations: DHS chief
New immigration order delayed until next week
GUATEMALA CITY (AFP) — The United States is not carrying out mass roundups or deportations under its tough crackdown on undocumented migrants, but it is determined to “gain control” of its southern border, its domestic security chief said Wednesday.
“We are not going out and doing mass deportations,” Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly told a news conference in Guatemala, after talks with that country’s president.
He said that two memos he signed Tuesday, enacting directions from U.S. President Donald Trump to clamp down on immigrants deemed to be in the United States illegally would prioritize “criminal offenders” while ensuring due process in U.S. courts was upheld.
“But there will be no mass roundups. When we do take someone into custody they are then put into the American legal justice system — that’s the courts, and it’s the courts that will decide what happens to them,” he said.
Kelly’s visit to Guatemala — one of three violence- and poverty-wracked Central American countries that provide many undocumented migrants to the U.S. — was the first by a senior U.S. official since Trump took power last month.
Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras are especially concerned about Trump’s drive to cut down on illegal immigration and to reduce the size of the undocumented migrant population in the U.S., estimated at 11 million.
Many of those living in America provide a vital financial lifeline to family in Latin American countries in the form of remittances.
Meanwhile, Trump is delaying until next week issuing a new version of his order restricting immigration and banning travel to the U.S. from seven predominantly Muslim countries, according to a White House official.
Tillerson in Mexico
MEXICO CITY (AFP) — U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson landed in Mexico Wednesday for talks to ease tensions over President Donald Trump’s trade and immigration policies.
Trump has outraged Mexico by vowing to build a wall along the border to keep out migrants, whom he branded rapists and criminals during his presidential campaign.
His government on Tuesday issued new orders to the authorities to begin arresting and deporting illegal immigrants, many of them Mexicans.
Trump has also threatened to put up barriers to Mexican exports, shift jobs from that country back to the United States and even halt remittances by U.S.-based Mexicans back to their families.
Now he has sent Tillerson and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly to Mexico City to smooth over tensions — and discuss with Mexican Enrique Pena Nieto how to curb cross-border migration and drug-trafficking.
“It’s significant that the president is sending the secretaries to Mexico so early in the administration. It’s symbolic of the meaningful relationship that our two nations have,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters on Wednesday.