Trump Binds Mexico

The U.S. Supreme Court decision to support the immigration policy of Donald Trump, whose administration could establish a new rule that restricts the conditions for asylum application, even making it impossible for many Central Americans, does not only signify a triumph of Trump’s intransigence toward immigration. It also serves to demonstrate the fragility that Mexico has remained exposed to in the face of unilateral decisions made by the president of the United States, turning it into a sort of immigration police for the occupier of the White House.

The new rule affects this Latin American country directly, because all asylum seekers who have passed through its territory will not be able to seek protection on United States territory unless they have been turned down by the Mexican government or by another country’s government. This new measure signifies, in practice, a padlock on the door to the United States for hundreds of thousands of Central Americans who, for the most part, flee from violence and poverty. Hondurans and Salvadorans would have to seek asylum in Guatemala and Mexico; Guatemalans, on their part, would do it in Mexico.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration has lamented the verdict of the highest U.S. judicial authority, but the rebuttal has been extremely lukewarm, like all moves that the government has made in the past three months, ever since Trump threatened to impose a 5% tariff on Mexican products. The fragility of the economy, which narrowly avoided recession in the first half of the year, has required López Obrador to dodge, at whatever price and against his own beliefs, any trade confrontation with the United States. This has, it’s true, given him the approval of the business class, which is confronting other issues with the president.

The new Mexican president started his six-year term with an open door policy toward Central American immigrants and promoted a kind of Marshall Plan, which would require economic support of the United States. All that has been blurred with each passing month. Mexico has subjected its immigration policy to the interests of one Donald Trump who, in the middle of his re-election campaign, has given no sign that he would hesitate, when the time comes, to go back to criticizing his neighbor to the south if that is what his interests require. Each time the focus on Central American immigrants in Mexico gets stronger, all alarms go off. There is a stronger rejection of the immigrant population each time and xenophobic incidents reoccur with increased regularity. The vulnerability that the immigrants remain exposed to, thanks to the organized crime mafias in a country with a serious security crisis, deserves an even more forceful rejection.