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Border Arrests Surge to 7-Year High as Mexico Tries to Head Off Tariffs
Trump Says No Deal With Mexico Reached as Border Arrests Surge
(about 2 hours later)
WASHINGTON — Central American migrants surged across the United States border with Mexico in May, officials announced on Wednesday, as American and Mexican diplomats began discussions aimed at averting the damaging economic consequences from President Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on all Mexican imports.
WASHINGTON — The United States on Wednesday barreled closer to imposing tariffs on all Mexican imports as high-stakes negotiations at the White House and the State Department failed to immediately resolve President Trump’s demand that Mexico prevent a surge of Central American migrants from flowing across the southwestern border.
More than 144,200 migrants were arrested and taken into custody by Customs and Border Protection along the southwestern border in May, a 32 percent increase from April and the highest monthly total in seven years. Most crossed the border illegally, while about 10 percent arrived without the proper documentation at ports of entry along the border.
Mr. Trump declared Wednesday evening on Twitter that “not nearly enough” progress had been made and warned that “if no agreement is reached, Tariffs at the 5% level will begin on Monday, with monthly increases as per schedule.”
The announcement of the surge in border crossings was meant to put pressure on the Mexican government to meet Mr. Trump’s demands that it take quick action to stop the flow of migrants.
New figures released Wednesday showed that illegal border crossings have spiked to a 7-year high, underscoring the roots of the president’s rage. But political resistance to Mr. Trump’s tariff threat has also intensified, with skeptical Republican senators requesting to hear directly from the president before he takes an action that could shake the economies of both countries.
Vice President Mike Pence and other top administration officials began meeting on Wednesday afternoon at the White House with Mexico’s top diplomat. The talks come ahead of a Monday deadline, set by Mr. Trump, to begin taxing all Mexican goods at 5 percent and to increase the tax to 25 percent by October if Mexico does not prevent migrants from illegally entering the United States.
Mr. Trump, traveling abroad in Europe, had insisted earlier that he is not bluffing, but he also predicted that Mexico would make a deal to avert a series of escalating surcharges on their products. Marcelo Ebrard, the Mexican foreign minister, met Wednesday afternoon for two hours with Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, hoping to convince Mr. Trump’s top advisers that Mexico is working aggressively to protect the border.
But it remained unclear what would satisfy the president, who has offered conflicting statements about his intentions. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump said that it was “more likely that the tariffs” would be imposed. On Wednesday, the president said he believed Mexico was ready to make a deal to prevent the tariffs from going into effect.
In his tweet at just after 6:30 p.m., Mr. Trump said that talks with Mexico had ended and would resume on Thursday.
“Mexico, you know, wants to make a deal,” Mr. Trump said during a trip to Ireland. “They have their entire delegation right now going over to probably the White House location to negotiate with our people.”
But there was no indication that Mr. Trump would be satisfied by anything short of direct evidence that Mexico had completely ended the flow of migration through its country. The president has repeatedly railed in private and public about what he considers to be a failure of Mexican authorities. He has set a deadline of next Monday, saying he will use broad emergency powers to begin taxing all Mexican goods at 5 percent and to increase the tax to 25 percent by October if illegal crossings do not completely end—a feat that diplomats, politicians and immigration experts said is wildly unrealistic.
Mexican officials, along with Republican lawmakers, are trying to prevent Mr. Trump from imposing the tariffs, which could cause economic damage on both sides of the border. Marcelo Ebrard, the Mexican foreign minister, met on Wednesday afternoon at the White House with Mr. Pence, a senior administration official said, in an effort to convince the president that Mexico is doing everything it can to help prevent illegal immigration across the United States border. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Robert Lighthizer, the United States trade representative, were also expected to attend the meeting.
Wednesday’s announcement by Customs and Border Protection of a dramatic surge in border crossings was meant to put pressure on the Mexican government to meet Mr. Trump’s demands. More than 144,200 migrants were arrested and taken into custody along the southwestern border in May, a 32 percent increase from April and the highest monthly total in seven years. Most crossed the border illegally, while about 10 percent arrived without the proper documentation at ports of entry along the border.
Mr. Trump, frustrated by what he views as Mexico’s failure to stem the flow of migrants, said he would use broad emergency powers to impose punishing tariffs on the country. But top American officials have spoken in vague terms about what steps Mexico must take in order to get the president to back down.
“Look, the drugs that are coming in, the people that are coming in unchecked, they’re swamping our border,” Mr. Trump said during a meeting with the Irish prime minister in Shannon, Ireland. “Mexico can stop it. They have to stop it. Otherwise, we just won’t be able to do business. It’s a very simple thing.”
Peter Navarro, a top trade adviser who has advocated using levies to punish Mexico, said on Wednesday in an interview with CNN that Mr. Trump’s threat had gotten the Mexican government’s attention and that the United States might not have to impose the tariffs.
In his tweet, he added that border arrests were so high “because of Mexico and the Democrats in Congress refusing to budge on immigration reform.”
“We believe that these tariffs may not have to go into effect precisely because we have the Mexicans’ attention,” Mr. Navarro said.
But the president faces intense opposition to the tactic of using tariffs as leverage for the immigration issue not only from Democrats, but also from business executives, economists and members of his own party. As Monday’s deadline approaches, Republican senators are mobilizing to prevent the White House from moving ahead with tariffs, warning Mr. Trump that they are almost uniformly opposed to his plans to tax Mexican imports.
Mr. Navarro and others in the Trump administration have said the Mexican government must secure its own border with Guatemala, through which many migrants travel on their way to the United States. They have demanded that Mexican officials crack down on transnational gangs that facilitate migrant travel. And they have insisted that Mexico agree to take in all of the asylum seekers who would otherwise claim refuge in the United States.
At a lunchtime briefing on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told administration lawyers that Republican senators needed to hear directly from Mr. Trump before his administration slapped tariffs on Mexico, according to two Republican officials familiar with the discussion.
But officials have provided few other specifics about how Mexico could meet those goals quickly enough to stave off Mr. Trump’s anger. Mexico has already tried to secure its own southern border and has long fought transnational gangs.
In the closed-door lunch off the Senate floor, several Republicans complained bitterly, arguing that tariffs would harm their constituents and the economy while doing nothing to improve the immigration problems at the border. Many of them were irritated that the discussion about a major policy move that could take effect within days was unfolding at a time when the president was abroad, and that the administration sent two lower-level attorneys who could not answer basic questions about the tariffs to Capitol Hill to brief them.
In the past six months, the Mexican government has deported more than 80,500 migrants back to their homes in Central America and elsewhere, according to government data. During the same period, Mexican authorities detained about 400 people accused of trafficking migrants. And nearly 25,000 migrants applied for refuge in Mexico in the first five months of 2019.
Mr. McConnell asked the lawyers when the tariffs would go into effect. When they answered June 10, Mr. McConnell replied, “OK, Monday,” and said Republican senators would need to hear from the president before then. Mr. Trump is scheduled to return from his European trip on Friday.
“The Mexican government could interdict more migrants for sure, but they can’t just flip a switch and turn off the flow,” said Kevin Appleby, a veteran expert on migration.
In Mexico, there is popular support for treating Central American migrants humanely, and many Mexicans do not want to see President Andrés Manuel López Obrador bow to the wishes of his counterpart in the United States.
“He’s between a rock and a hard place. He doesn’t want to be seen as being a toady to the United States,” said Doug Massey, a professor of sociology at Princeton University and a director of the Mexican Migration Project. “He doesn’t want to violate the human rights of Central Americans, who after all are simply escaping terrible conditions.”
Mr. Ebrard expressed optimism, telling reporters on Tuesday in Washington that there was an 80 percent chance that Mr. Trump would not impose the tariffs.
But others in Washington were more doubtful that the two sides could come to a resolution before Monday’s deadline. Carlos Heredia, a professor at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas in Mexico City, said Tuesday that whatever action Mexico takes to prevent migration into the United States, it was unlikely to satisfy the president.
“If there is any logic to the way that President Trump handles policy, it’s that he likes conflict,” Mr. Heredia said. “I don’t think that there is a way to please Trump.”
Others said that it would take time for Mexico to make the changes the Trump administration was requesting.
“This is not going to happen in seven days,” said Arturo Sarukhan, a former Mexican ambassador to the United States. “You can’t enforce your way out of a migration crisis.”
Mr. Trump’s tariff threat is driven largely by the significant increase in the number of migrants crossing illegally at the border. Having vowed during his campaign to stop illegal immigration, the president views the increasing flow of migrants as a personal affront and a threat to his political brand.
More than 100,000 of those arrested in May were unaccompanied children or migrants traveling as a family when they arrived at the border, officials said. In March 2017, shortly after Mr. Trump took office, that number was about 2,000, according to government records.
“We are at a full blown emergency,” said John Sanders, the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. “I cannot say this stronger: the system is broken.”
Mr. Trump has pushed ahead with the tariff threat against Mexico despite the concerns of some of his advisers, who warned that the measure might derail the effort to finalize his new North American trade deal. The president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who negotiated some of the deal’s provisions with Mexico, had raised concerns about the potential impact on the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, as had Mr. Lighthizer and Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary.
But they were opposed by advisers like Mr. Navarro and Stephen Miller, a chief policy adviser, and they were overruled by the president, who argued that tariffs had previously worked to pressure the Mexicans on immigration.
The threat has rattled financial markets and prompted an outcry from businesses that would be affected, including automakers, agricultural companies and retailers. The chairman of the Federal Reserve said on Tuesday that the central bank was watching Mr. Trump’s trade war warily and would act to prevent economic damage from the conflict.
Mr. Trump has made heavy use of tariffs on trading partners from China to Europe, but imposing tariffs on Mexico, the United States’ largest trading partner, would be a significant escalation in the president’s trade war. Mexico is a key supplier of products like fresh tomatoes and grapes; bluejeans; televisions; medical devices; and automobiles. Many companies have created supply chains that snake back and forth across the border — meaning some companies could be forced to pay Mr. Trump’s tariff multiple times as their products travel from farms to factories to consumers.
Businesses are also worried that the president’s move risks derailing what would be his signature trade achievement: passing the newly negotiated North American trade agreement.
The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement was signed last year, but it still needs to be ratified by legislators in all three countries. Mexico submitted the text to its Senate hours before Mr. Trump’s threat. But Mexican officials are unlikely to move forward with that vote with the threat of tariffs hanging over them.
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, in an interview on Wednesday with Bloomberg News, said he was “concerned and anxious” the tariffs would interfere with ratification of U.S.M.C.A. But he added he was also hopeful that tariffs would not go into effect.
“I’m hoping that we can find some reasonable, actionable items that Mexico can achieve that would again ameliorate the president’s actions here,” Mr. Perdue said.
Republican senators are mobilizing to prevent the White House from moving ahead with tariffs, warning Mr. Trump on Tuesday that they were almost uniformly opposed to his plans to tax Mexican imports.
Several big states would be hit hard by the proposed tariffs on Mexican products, including Texas, Michigan, California, Illinois and Ohio, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
“We’re holding a gun to our own heads,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas.
Officials at Customs and Border Protection were making preparations on Wednesday to begin imposing the tariffs just after midnight on Monday morning.
Mr. Ebrard said earlier in the week that Mexican officials had come to Washington ready to “design actions together.”
But Mexico’s ambassador to the United States, Martha Bárcena, appeared less hopeful.
“There is a clear limit to what we can negotiate,” Ms. Bárcena said. “And that limit is Mexican dignity.”
