Migration Yes, Security No

Why does an agreement with the president of the United States outweigh a promise made to the Mexican people?

Tuesday evening, after delegations from the governments of both countries met in Washington to review the results of the migration agreement signed on June 7, Donald Trump tweeted to celebrate the drastically declining number of immigrants detained in the United States without documentation.

“Incredible Progress being made at the Southern Border!” Trump tweeted. And he supported his claim with a graph that showed a 92.2% decrease from 119,013 detainees in May to 9,292 as of September.

Despite the fact that Trump compared an entire month’s worth of data with that of a couple of days, his enthusiasm was shared by Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, who said that same Tuesday that the strategy to cut the flow of migrants to the border is working.

Three months ago, Mexico promised to do just that to avoid Trump’s threat of imposing tariffs on all Mexican exports. And boy has Mexico kept its word.

The cost has been the deployment of thousands of National Guard, Federal Police and National Institute of Migration personnel to full-time duty to keep people from Central America and other regions of the world seeking passage to the United States through Mexico at bay on the Guatemalan border, and detain those who had been admitted into Mexico prior to the signing of the agreement, as well as those who sneaked in through new and dangerous routes.

From January to July of this year, the number of immigrants without documentation who were stopped by Mexican authorities reached 123,000, 30,000 of which were detained in June alone.

In addition, Mexico agreed to be part of a program – simply referred to as “Stay In Mexico” – which consists of allowing people seeking political asylum in the United States to remain in the United States while a judge rules on their petition.

According to a report from The Los Angeles Times, some 35,000 migrants, mainly people from Central America, found themselves in that situation, while another 18,000 registered to be interviewed on the U.S. side of the border. If we stick to the August data tweeted by Trump (30,281 detainees in that country), today there are more new migrants from Central America without documentation confined in Mexico than in the United States.

The agreement has had an impact on the country’s reputation, given that international organizations and even the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet of Chile have criticized the new Mexican migration policy.

There are those who have celebrated Mexico finally having control over its borders, which is no minor point, considering that migrants have become the prey of criminal organizations. But what is unquestionable is the contrast that exists between the content of the immigration policy that was agreed upon with Washington and the fight against unsecured borders.

As I said yesterday, almost five months ago, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador promised that the results of his strategy against organized crime violence would begin to surface in his first term. So far, we have seen a lack thereof. And we must ask ourselves why there has been so much success in meeting Trump’s requests and so little response to the demand for greater security by the public.

Is it because the former has the ability to threaten sanctions in case of noncompliance and the latter does not?