Mexico and Canada have begun a number of activity on their borders with the US in a willingness show to capture migrants in front of a deadline in which President Donald Trump has threatened to impose penalty fees.
In the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez at the US border, workers began to fill a 300 -meter tunnel this week used to smuggle migrants to Texas. The 1.8 -meter -high tunnel, with electric cables and ventilation, ran under Río Bravo, also known as Rio Grande, from Central Juárez supports a large highway. US agents said they had discovered it earlier this month.
Mexico has set up large shelters, with air-conditioned air, while President Claudia Sheinbaum said some non-Mexico were among the thousands of migrants that Mexico took back in the first week of Trump. She had previously suggested that her country could accept non-mexic migrants as a offer for Trump.
Canada placed the newly rented helicopters of Black Hawk Patrol, extra dogs and 60 drones on its border with the US as part of its response to Trump’s demands for both countries to curb the entrance of illegal migrants and Fentanil.
Canada Public Security Minister David McGuinty said their effort “includes political rapprochement, official extension and operational extent”, including talks this week with the Trump Tsar Tom Homan border.
Officials at Mexico City and Otava rushed to demonstrate action after Trump threatened to impose 25 percent tariffs on their exports as early as February 1, if they failed to shorten migration and drug trade.
If implemented, threatened tariffs would send both economies to the recession, increase industry supply chains from electronic cars and raise prices for US consumers, analysts said.
Trump briefly announced the penalty fees in Colombia last week after she refused to accept two military aircraft kept interned, but raised them when Bogotá withdrew quickly.
He has also declared a national emergency on the American-Mexico border, sent 1,500 additional troops, and canceled the legal entry paths created by his predecessor Joe Biden, including an asylum applications.
Measures have left thousands of migrants, including Argenis, a 26-year-old Venezuela who had hoped to reunite with his brother in Texas, trapped in the Mexican border towns.
“The videos came out in tiktok of people embracing their families. I was so excited to embrace my family too, ”he told FT.
“(Then) I was depressed. I even wiped my WhatsApp. I didn’t want to talk to anyone.”
Trump placed the southern American border in the heart of all three of his presidential campaigns, singing last year against record levels of illegal immigration under the biden.
Sheinbaum said Monday that migration officials from both countries had held several virtual meetings and had reached an agreement without providing further details.
Mexico again received about 4,000 migrants in the first week of Trump, a rise from about 3,700 a week last year, according to government data.
Mexico had already increased the implementation of immigration by order of the US for more than a decade. Last year it increased controls and stops across the country, focusing on the foreign migrant bus in the south.
Mexico is also under pressure on drug cartels that supply substances including deadly opioid fenthan in the US inhibiting that trade is difficult, with combined killings and disappearance in place to record high levels.
Security Minister Omar García Harfuch said on Tuesday that since October more than 10,000 people have been arrested for high -impact crimes such as murder and violent robbery, and more than 90 tons of drugs seized.
The situation on the Canada border with the US differs from Mexico. Since June last year, US authorities have found about 100,000 people a month illegally passing through Mexico, according to customs and US border protection, but on the northern border with Canada was about 15,000 a month.
Canada has said that only about 1 percent of the Fentanile entering the US is transported beyond its border. But that has not prevented Trump from threatening it, alongside Mexico. In recent months, both Mexico and Canada have announced large drug busts.
Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, who will travel to Washington DC to meet Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday, said this week she would also talk to Mexico, the United Kingdom and EU counterparts.
“In the heart of my conversations with my British colleagues and my European colleagues will be the question of how to answer the tariffs,” she said on Monday.
In December Canada announced an additional C 1.3BN (US $ 900 million) to strengthen border security and the immigration system. It increased patrols and supervision along the border, which lies nearly 9,000 km across the ground and water.
Xavi Delgado, from the Canada Institute at Wilson Center in Washington DC, said: “This has been an awakening call for Ottawa. Trump has expressed disappointment with Canada to take the US as well.”
Mexico and Canada have lobbied lawmakers and others in the president’s district, arguing that tariffs would be a “losing” situation for all three countries.
Despite Trump’s blow, some migrants in Mexico remain hopeful. “I’m thinking of staying here quietly, waiting,” said Gabriel, a 23-year-old from Venezuela, on the border. “I feel that at any moment we will be able to pass legally, or something good will happen.”
