Stepping up deportations, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service [INS] hit a major snag when Mexican officials refused to take nationals from other Latin American countries. While most Americans see illegal immigration coming from Mexico, that doesn’t mean the lawbreakers come from Mexico. U.S. officials thought Mexico would automatically accept deportees from other Latin American countries, throwing a monkey wrench into Trump’s plans to deport illegal criminal aliens. “They can’t leave them here on the borders because we have to reject them. There is no chance they would be received in Mexico,” said Miguel Angel Osorio Chong, Mexico’s chief border official. Trump thought Mexico would take anyone that passed over the Mexican border into the United States, something Mexico rejects. When you consider the volume of refugees from other Latin countries, it only makes sense.
Trump’s orders to the INS go beyond what he originally sold to American voters about deporting only undocumented immigrants with violent felonies. Under Trump’s revised plan, deporting illegal aliens with non-violent criminal records, it would cost U.S. taxpayers $500 million a year. With Mexico’s decision to take no one other than Mexican nationals, it puts the kibosh on Trump’s plans to extend deportations beyond convicted felons or violent criminals. “They asked us that while their legal process is happening there if they could be here,” Osorio Chong said. “And we told them [Secretary of State Rex Tillerson] and Homeland Security Secretary Gen. John Kelly] there’s no way we can have them here during that process,” putting an end to Trump’s mass deportations. Putting deportations in the spotlight has enough symbolic value to fulfill Trump’s campaign promise.
Given the whopping federal budget deficits that could balloon to over $1 trillion in 2017, there’s simply no discretionary funds to pay for tens-of-thousand if not millions of one-way plane flights to Central and South America, not to mention a whopping increase in full-time Border Patrol jobs. Shooting down a Homeland Security memo that suggested the INS could deport illegal aliens to a contiguous country, no longer seems viable after Mexican officials rejected the idea. U.S. officials want Mexico to take a more aggressive role in their own border enforcement, sending Central and South Americans back to countries-of-origin before reaching the U.S. border. Apprehending 408,870 illegal aliens in 2016 doesn’t come close to the 1.5 million captured in 1999 and 2000, at the end of former President Bill Clinton’s administration. INS and Border Patrol officials have their hands full in 2017.
Apprehending 58,319 unattended children and 73,888 families in 2016, most came from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, not Mexico. Battling lawlessness and drug cartels, the Mexican government has already spread resources so thin they can’t take the tens-of-thousands of deportations of Central and South Americans expected under Trump’s INS orders. Osorio Chong told U.S. officials that if the Trump administration pulls the $2.5 billion it receives in Merida Initiative cash to fight drug cartels, Mexico can live with the consequences. No country with the limited resources of Mexico can absorb tens-of-thousands of illegal aliens from Central and South America. Trump officials need to face reality, scale back deportation plans and confine resources to deporting only violent felons, no matter what the expense. Trump faces a looming debt-ceiling crisis March 15.
Campaigning against a $20 trillion debt ceiling, Trump’s going to be hard-pressed convincing Congress to continue piling onto the U.S. National Debt. Wasting money on costly deportations is the fastest way for Trump to bust the budget, unable to pay for urgent increases in defense spending, health care and infrastructure projects. When debt-ceiling talks come up in the next few weeks, the INS situation will get a dose of reality. Paying for more border agents and transportation costs isn’t the way to face a growing budget deficit and debt ceiling. Meeting at Gaylord National Resort in Orion Hill, Md., Trump addressed the 2017 Political Action Committee Conference promising to uphold conservative principles, including fiscal responsibility. Paying for costly mass deportations doesn’t fit into Trump’s current budget, already facing a mandatory increase in the national debt ceiling.
Heading off a collision with Mexcio, Tillerson and Kelly heard firsthand that Mexico can’t take the Trump administration’s overflow from deporting mass numbers of Central and South Americans. Going back to the drawing board, Trump must pivot to Plan B, deporting only violent convicted felons. Trump knows that American business and industry is too dependent now on cheap Latino labor, something showing itself in practically every major city in the U.S. Most U.S. businesses assembling or manufacturing in Mexico don’t like Trump’s plans to slap tariffs on otherwise profitable businesses. It’s one thing to try to keep businesses in the U.S., it’s another of punish businesses that have flourished under the North American Free Trade Agreement, enabling U.S. businesses to manufacture-or-assemble in Mexico. Tillerson and Kelly have a lot to report to Trump.
