Talking Points | The U.S. Mexico Border And Migration Deals

By Jack Watson – Syracuse, N.Y. (CitrusTV) – The United States will look to broker a deal with Mexico that would allocate $20 million in U.S. foreign aid funds to deport migrants in Mexico back to their home countries, a statement from the State Department says.

The move is part of an ongoing effort by the administration of U.S. President Donald J. Trump to significantly limit immigration through the country’s southern border with Mexico.

The U.S. apprehended a total of 46,560 people in August, according to statistics from United States Customs and Border Protection. The number of family units arrested at the southwest border, as described by U.S. Customs, increased 38% in August compared to July.

A large portion of the immigrants that cross the U.S. border come not only from Mexico itself, but from countries in Central America such as Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. The deal put forth by the U.S. would aim to send back these immigrants, who are journeying through Mexico to get to the southern United States.

The $20 million the U.S. would pay Mexico in the event of a successful deal would come from foreign aid, of which the U.S. has about $3 billion left to spend, as The New York Times identifies.

The money would be used to finance transportation costs, like bus and plane tickets.

With particular care to the border issue, the Mexican transition of power will be of interest to international observers; Mexico elected Andres Manuel López-Obrador, abbreviated as “AMLO,” of the left-leaning National Regeneration Movement party to be the nation’s next president. AMLO reportedly spoke with U.S. President Trump over the phone in July, which Trump called a “great” conversation.

López-Obrador and President Trump were each elected on nationalist and populist platforms, but on opposite sides of the political spectrum.

AMLO, along with a majority of his social democratic party in Mexico’s Congress of the Union, is slated to take office in December as Enrique Peña Nieto of the centrist Industrial Revolution Party moves out. At the beginning of President Trump’s term, the now-outgoing Mexican president canceled a visit to Washington because of the former’s demands to pay for a large border wall across the U.S.-Mexico border. Should the U.S. and Mexico work together, the deal would be another step toward greater diplomacy between the two nations, which have each traded divisive rhetoric about the other in the past few years.