Mexico will not accept Trump’s immigration plans, foreign minister says

Calling the measure “unilateral” and “unprecedented”, Videgaray said new immigration guidelines would top the agenda of meetings in Mexico City with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly.

“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. But there were no public mentions of that massive border wall or President Donald Trump’s plan to deport non-Mexicans to Mexico as top US officials visited the Mexican capital.

For their part, Kelly and Tillerson sought to cool tempers as they adopted a more measured tone than either the Mexicans or Trump, who on Thursday said a military operation was being carried out to clear “bad dudes” from the US.

Trump’s February 21 executive order also ordered construction of a U.S. -Mexico border wall.

For almost a decade now, the majority of those crossing illegally into the United States on our southern border are not Mexicans but Guatemalans, Hondurans, Salvadorans and others for whom Mexico is simply their transit point.

But as far as the 19 Democratic Revolution Party Senators are concerned, the two are not welcome in Mexico. Tillerson will also visit staff at the U.S. Embassy.

They held banners that said “The Secretaries are not welcome”, and “Stop Donald Trump, Hate, Racism, Ignorance“. We import more from Mexico than we export to Mexico, but Mexicans still bought $237 billion worth of goods and services from the U.S.in 2015.

“There is concern and irritation among Mexicans about what are seen as policies that could be detrimental for Mexicans in Mexico and overseas”, he said.

Senior Mexican politicians and diplomats, reflecting the huge rage at Trump’s characterisation of its migrants as “bad hombres”, have suggested a number of approaches that range from mass actions in the U.S. courts in defence of their citizens, to appeals to the United Nations for support.

It could take place in Mexico or the United States, he said.

For Mr Peña Nieto, the meeting is a hard balancing act between protecting Mexico’s $580bn annual trade relationship with the United States and trying not to anger Mexicans at home.

Mexican newspapers have described the deportation policies in apocalyptic terms, saying in some cases that they represented “war” on the millions of Mexicans who are in the US. “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. The guidance set priorities for deportations, he said, beginning with illegal immigrants who have committed crimes in the U.S.

But Kelly said there would be “no use of military force in immigration operations”, and “no, repeat, no” mass deportations.

“We listened closely and cared for each other as we respectfully and patiently raised our respective concerns“, Tillerson said. “There’s no mistaking that the rule of law matters on both sides of our border“.

Back in Washington, the president told a group of manufacturing CEOs the trade relationship with Mexico was “unsustainable.”

At the G-20 economic summit, however, Videgaray did not shy away from what is at stake in the upcoming negotiations.