Dem
47
GOP
53
OK, not literally, but the people migrating from the U.S. to Mexico—under the close supervision of ICE—are not all welcome in Mexico. In particular, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum doesn't want migrants who are not Mexicans. This could be a problem. Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) thinks he has a solution, though: Just raise tariffs as high as necessary to get Mexico to buckle under Trump's rule. That might not be quite as easy as Scott thinks, because many American companies have factories (maquiladoras) in Northern Mexico and the products they make could be priced out of the market by high tariffs. That would lead to those companies letting Donald Trump know what they think about the plan—in great detail. Of course, exceptions might be available to companies that paid Trump enough in $TRUMP coins.
One of the XOs Trump signed on Day 1 of Trump v2.0 revived his "Remain in Mexico" order from Trump v1.0. This means asylum-seekers have to stay there until a judge has time to review their case. There is a massive backlog and it can take years for a case to make it to some immigration judge's docket. All that time, the would-be immigrant has to remain in Mexico. If that person is a Mexican citizen, Mexico has no problem with that, but has a big problem housing people who are not Mexicans, often for years. They can't always be sent back to their country of origin because many countries don't want them back. These include Bangladesh, China, Cuba, India, Iran, and Venezuela. If they made it to Mexico, Mexico does not want them, and neither does their home country, where do they go?
Trump is going to have to figure this out sooner or later, probably sooner. Increasingly migrants from outside Latin America are flying to Mexico and then trying to sneak across the porous U.S. border. Trump may not have gotten the word yet, but some senators have. Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said: "These are folks that are coming in from Tajikistan and other areas the Mexicans are not going to take back. These are recalcitrant countries that are not accepting folks back."
The numbers are substantial. The Border Patrol has said that in fiscal 2024, 38,000 undocumented Chinese people crossed into the U.S. Dumping them in Mexico is not going to work since Mexico does not want them and neither does China. Now what?
Another aspect of this problem is that the migrants nobody wants have become sitting ducks for (drug) cartels. Even if a migrant can get space in a Mexican shelter, it is not safe for them to go outside if they haven't paid off the cartel. Otherwise they could be robbed, raped or kidnapped. One potential policy that Mexico may adopt, possibly under pressure, is to require anyone flying into Mexico to show a return ticket and a hotel reservation for the duration of their stay to get past Mexican immigration in the first place. Anyone lacking those things would be sent back at the airline's expense. This will force the airlines to vet everyone before they get on a flight to Mexico.
This would not solve the problem entirely, but it would force would-be migrants to buy round-trip tickets and make hotel reservations. The next step would be to insist on only nonrefundable tickets and reservations. For legitimate tourists and people traveling for business, this would be a nuisance, but not a huge hardship. For would-be migrants it would greatly raise the barrier. (V)