As we told you earlier today, Trump is considering pushing forward the deadline on his new tariffs for Mexico, giving negotiations more time to develop. That would seem to indicate things are going well.
Now we have more details on what is actually being negotiated and it looks like things are going as well as we thought:
WAPO – Faced with Trump’s threat to impose escalating tariffs on Mexican goods beginning Monday, Mexican officials have pledged to deploy up to 6,000 National Guard troops to the country’s border region with Guatemala, a show of force they say will make immediate reductions in the number of Central Americans heading north toward the U.S. border.
The Mexican official and the U.S. official said the countries are negotiating a sweeping plan to overhaul asylum rules across the region, a move that would require Central Americans to seek refuge in the first foreign country they set foot upon after fleeing their homeland.
Under such a plan, the United States would swiftly deport Guatemalan asylum seekers who set foot on U.S. soil to Mexico. And the United States would send Honduran and Salvadoran asylum applicants to Guatemala, whose government held talks with acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan last week.
I don’t know much about Mexico’s border with Guatemala other than what I can discern from Google Maps (lots of high mountains on part of the border, etc), but 6,000 troops and these asylum changes sounds like a great start to solving this crisis going forward.
But there are still things to be worked out:
Significant differences remain about how quickly and how much Mexico can reduce unauthorized migration through tougher enforcement measures, the U.S. official said. Last month, U.S. authorities made more than 144,000 arrests along the southern border, the highest level in 13 years.
Mexico has told the United States that the National Guard deployment — along with promises to build more migrant detention centers and checkpoints to catch Central Americans and deter their passage — will quickly reduce migration flows to the levels of last fall, when arrests averaged about 50,000 per month.
Trump officials have told Mexico that is not enough, making it clear that the White House will only be satisfied with a return to the numbers tallied in the months after Trump was inaugurated, when arrests fell below 20,000, the lowest level in half a century.
U.S. authorities continue to push for a more forceful and intimidating enforcement approach from Mexico, while Mexico is urging the United States to address the underlying structural problems in Central America — poverty, violence and drought — that are driving emigration.
With the current pace being so out of control, I can understand why Trump would be pushing for enough resources to bring the arrests levels back down to 20,000. But honestly, I think they’d be crazy not to take a goal of 50,000 arrests if that’s all they can get at this time. And I’m sure they know that, and they are just trying to get the best deal they can to help alleviate the border crisis.
I gotta say if Trump pulls this off, he’ll have something significant to tout next year in his campaign for president. Democrats will look foolish because they sat on their hands and did nothing while Trump was able to fix things on his own without Congress.