This president hasn’t met an agreement he wouldn’t abrogate, even if he was the one who negotiated them.
Frustrated by the surge in asylum-seeking families on the southern border, President Trump has threatened to start another trade war — this time with Mexico, the United States’ biggest trading partner at the moment. The problems at the border are real, but the president’s response is a tantrum. Mexico deserves better, and so do we.
The number of arrests at the border has increased rapidly in recent months, jumping from about 700 per day in May 2017 to 4,500 per day in the first three weeks of May 2019, according to the Trump administration. And while the total remains below its level in the early 2000s, far more of those detained are Central American families seeking asylum, which the system is poorly equipped to handle, instead of single males seeking work, who can be deported quickly.
Trump pointed a finger Thursday at Mexico, whose “passive cooperation” enables migrants to flow northward from Central America into the United States. He gave the country less than two weeks to alleviate the “illegal migration crisis” or else face tariffs on all its exports to the United States, starting at 5% and escalating to 25% by Oct. 1.
But the president is demanding the impossible — stopping a human tide of people desperate to escape dangerous and impoverished areas — while establishing no criteria for success. As it is, Mexico has sent home more than 600,000 Central Americans since 2014, and diverted others by offering humanitarian visas and work permits if they remain in Mexico rather than continuing to the U. S. border. It also recently announced plans to bolster security at its border with Guatemala and to try to throttle passage of migrants by establishing a security cordon across the 125-mile-wide Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico’s narrowest point.
