“We’ll keep it closed for a long time. I’m not playing games,” Trump told reporters during a visit to the Herbert Hoover Dike at Lake Okeechobee, Florida. Asked if that would include trade – Mexico is the country’s third-largest trading partner — Trump said: “It could be [closed] to all trade,” reports NBC News.
Between talking with reporters in Florida, Trump also aired his frustrations via Twitter, tweeting: “This would be so easy for Mexico to do, but they just take our money and “talk.” Besides, we lose so much money with them, especially when you add in drug trafficking, etc.), that the Border closing would be a good thing!”
It’s hard to tell what is at the core of Trump’s latest tirade over immigrants coming into this country. On the one hand, he says the numbers of people crossing into the U.S. makes for an urgent situation because “we have right now two big caravans coming from Guatemala, massive caravans, walking right through Mexico. If they don’t stop’ em, we’re closing the border,” he said.
Yet, on the other hand, Trump seems to be concerned about our trade deficit with Mexico and the amount of trade crossing the border back-and-forth between the two countries. As he told reporters today, “And with a deficit like we’ve have with Mexico and have had for many years, closing the borders will be a profit-making operation. When you close the border, also you will stop a lot of the drugs from coming in.”
I would like to extend my profound gratitude to our Central American allies Honduras, Guatemala & El Salvador—as well as usembassyhn and USAmbHonduras—for their commitment to our common cause of secure borders & more orderly migration flows. Kirstjen Nielsen (@SecNielsen) March 28, 2019
All this ranting and raving about the border came just hours before Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen offered praise to Mexico and other Central American countries for the work they have done to slow immigration. However, Nielsen issued a statement after Trump’s tweets on Friday calling the situation at the border “a cascading crisis.”
Closing the border – sort of
First of all, Mexico is not sitting on the side of the road, letting caravans of migrants stroll on by to the U.S. border. Mexico deployed its military to an isthmus in southern Mexico to “contain” migrants heading north. And secondly, according to Vox, it is near impossible to stop all unauthorized migrants from setting foot on US soil.
So, according to the president, “the border will be closed.” The thing is, Trump can’t physically stop anyone from crossing into the US illegally. The only thing he can do is shut our ports of entry. That is all he can do – only affecting the people and goods that are legally coming into the country.
Another interesting tidbit of information is the increasing number of people being apprehended by US Border Patrol officials at the US-Mexico border, most of them families traveling together. They are not trying to evade capture, but actually, seek out border patrol officials.
And this has created the “crisis at the border.” In Nielsen’s statement on Friday, she described the situation: “The system is in freefall. DHS is doing everything possible to respond to a growing humanitarian catastrophe while also securing our borders, but we have reached peak capacity and are now forced to pull from other missions to respond to the emergency,” the statement said, adding that “the volume of ‘vulnerable populations’ arriving is without precedent. This makes it far more difficult to care for them and to prioritize individuals legitimately fleeing persecution.”
The Trump administration would love to have Congress change the treatment of children and families under US law by banning illegal entrants from making asylum claims. They tried that last year but the courts struck them down. The same would go with barring people seeking asylum simply because the border is closed. That goes against the law, too.
Lopez Obrador is staying out of Trump’s way
Mexico News Daily is reporting today that President Lopez Obrador refuses to be drawn into Trump’s threats, saying “we want to have a good relationship with the United States, we’re not going to argue.”
He added: “this thing about the caravans . . . has a lot to do with politics, electoral matters, that’s why I’m not going to get roped into the issue.” On Thursday, in talking about the caravans, Lopez Obrador said it was necessary to “review” how the groups were organized – “whether they are spontaneous . . . whether there are political or electoral purposes.”
He also added, “it is legitimate that they [the United States government] are displeased and they voice these concerns.” Now that is a very cautious man.
