Mexico won’t accept foreign deportees, US must assume responsibility – FM Videgaray
Mexico “does not have to, and will not” accept deportees coming from the United States, especially if they’re not Mexicans, the country’s Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said in an address to the Senate.
Videgaray stated on Tuesday that Washington “must assume a responsibility that it has historically not assumed,” citing the flow of arms from the United States to Mexico.
“Mexico does not have to and will not receive deportations coming from the United States, especially people who are not Mexican,” he added.
If Washington does not respect human rights, Mexico will turn to international organizations, including the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, he also said.
Last week the US Department of Homeland Security unveiled plans to consider almost all illegal immigrants subject to deportation, saying it wanted to deport them to Mexico if they entered the United States from there, regardless of their nationality.
President Donald Trump said last Thursday that his administration’s bid to remove undocumented immigrants is in fact a “military operation.”
“You see what’s happening at the border. All of a sudden for the first time we’re getting gang members out, we’re getting drug lords out. We’re getting really bad dudes out of this country and at a rate that nobody has ever seen before. And they’re the bad ones,” the Republican president said, speaking before a meeting with manufacturing industry CEO.
“And it’s a military operation because what has been allowed to come into our country – when you see gang violence that you’ve read about like never before and all of the things – much of that is people that are here illegally. And they’re rough and they’re tough, but they’re not tough like our people. So we’re getting them out,” Trump concluded.
Trump’s January 25 executive order on immigration, which instructs US federal agencies to “get back control of its borders,” aims to deport up to 3 million illegal immigrants, including those who have not been convicted of a crime.
Mexico has been up in arms over the latest US immigration policies.
“There exists among Mexicans worry and irritation about what are perceived to be policies that could be harmful for the national interest and for Mexicans here and abroad,” Videgaray told a news conference in Mexico City last week, speaking after talks with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Security chief John Kelly.
Videgaray said Mexico would never accept the new deportation rules.
“I want to say clearly and emphatically that the government of Mexico and the Mexican people do not have to accept provisions that one government unilaterally wants to impose on the other,” he told reporters at the Foreign Ministry last week, Reuters reported.
“We also have control of our borders and we will exercise it fully,” he said, adding that Mexico was prepared to go the United Nations to defend the freedoms and rights of Mexicans under international law.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer meanwhile portrayed quite a different picture of US-Mexico ties, saying they actually have a “very healthy and robust relationship.”
“I think the relationship with Mexico is phenomenal right now.”
US Customs and Border Protection said on Saturday it is planning to award contracts for Trump’s controversial wall along the US-Mexico border by mid-April. The two countries share a 3,200km border.
“The Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) intends on issuing a solicitation in electronic format on or about March 6, 2017 for the design and build [sic] of several prototype wall structures in the vicinity of the United States border with Mexico,” said a statement on the FedBizOpps.gov website for federal contractors.
Last week Trump confirmed that Washington will live up to its promise to build the wall.
“Oh, we’re going to build the wall, don’t worry about it. We’re building the wall. In fact, it’s going to start soon, way ahead of schedule, way ahead of schedule. Way, way, way ahead of schedule. It’s going to start very soon,” he said.
