Mexico Fumes Over Trump Immigration Rules as U.S. Talks Loom

Reuters

By Frank Jack Daniel

February 22, 2017

Mexico Fumes Over Trump Immigration Rules as U.S. Talks Loom 

MEXICO CITY — Senior envoys of President Donald Trump are likely to receive a chilly reception in Mexico on Wednesday, after the United States issued new immigration guidelines that deeply angered the southern neighbor the day before bilateral talks.

Trump's administration on Tuesday unveiled plans to consider almost all illegal immigrants subject to deportation, and will seek to send many of them to Mexico if they entered the United States from there, regardless of their nationality.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly are due to arrive in Mexico on Wednesday afternoon for talks on security and immigration.

Mexico's lead negotiator with the Trump administration, Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray, said there was no way Mexico would accept the new "unilateral" rules, which among other things seek to deport non-Mexicans to Mexico.

He said the issue would dominate the talks, taking place on Wednesday and Thursday.

"I want to say clearly and emphatically that the government of Mexico and the Mexican people do not have to accept provisions that one government unilaterally wants to impose on the other," he told reporters at the foreign ministry.

"We will not accept it, because there's no reason why we should, and because it is not in the interests of Mexico."

Another senior Mexican official, Roberto Campa, who heads the human rights department of the interior ministry, said Videgaray was referring to the plan to deport non-Mexicans to Mexico, calling it "hostile" and "unacceptable."

The Department of Homeland Security guidance to immigration agents is part of a broader border security and immigration enforcement plan in executive orders that Republican Trump signed on Jan. 25.

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