Donald Trump speaks at a Republican fundraiser in South Carolina in August 2023. SAM WOLFE (Portal)
Former United States President Donald Trump (2017-2021) assured this Tuesday that he had forced Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to introduce immigration control measures under threat of import tariffs. And it has highlighted the deployment of Mexican National Guard agents at the border. “Remember when they said Mexico didn’t pay? [la construcción] From the wall? […] Mexico gave us 28,000 free soldiers. That’s a lot more than just a little [de dinero] for the Wall,” he commented during an event in New Hampshire.
The United States began building the border fence in 2018. Recently elected López Obrador, trying to avoid confrontation, said he would address the issue later and through diplomatic channels. “Problems are not solved with walls, I will not fight with Trump,” he said at the time. A year later, in June 2019, Mexico’s executive branch conducted an unprecedented operation to evade Trump’s commercial threats: nearly 15,000 agents — including soldiers and National Guard agents — mobilized in the north of the country to help stem the flow of incoming migrants to stop the United States; They would be joined by the other thousands who joined the southern border. The former US President said Lopez Obrador initially denied the mission. “I told them, ‘Okay, but there will be big consequences […] “If they don’t provide us with 28,000 troops, I will tax anything Mexico sells to the United States at a rate of 25%,” he recalled.
The former US President has also compared Mexico’s National Guard agents stationed at the border to revolutionary Pancho Villa’s troops, noting that they are being tough and “wrong”. “These soldiers are also not politically correct. It must be ours. If our soldiers speak rudely to anyone, they will be imprisoned for life,” he said.
Trump has also highlighted the “Stay in Mexico” program, which detained migrants at the border with the United States while their asylum application process was ongoing, and has filed charges against people attempting to enter the country. “[El programa] It was another of my achievements: when people arrive, they come to our country, stay and never leave. “They are criminals, they come from prisons,” he criticized. During Trump’s presidency, the immigration process affected more than 70,000 people. Added to this are the more than 5,700 people affected during Joe Biden’s tenure. “Biden is throwing everything overboard,” Trump added in his speech. The immigration control program ended last October.
The border between Mexico and the United States has been a subject of constant dispute, particularly in recent years. During Barack Obama’s administration (2009-2017), the former president earned the nickname “Deporter-in-Chief” after deporting 1.8 million people in the first three years of his administration alone: an average of 383,000 per month. Obama’s numbers were higher than those of Donald Trump (2017-2021), whose administration expelled 240,000 people annually.
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