A mid-week visit from Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, revealed that current U.S. relations with Mexico are not in a good place.
In his campaign, President Donald Trump‘s rhetoric toward the country depicted Mexico as a burden to the U.S., sending drug lords and rapists here through illegal immigration. In addition to stating plans to build a wall, he also promised to conduct more deportation.
And his policies within the last month of his presidency reflect the same views.
“We do not agree on the different measures that recently were stated by the government of the United States (that) affect Mexico,” Mexican Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said.
“We have expressed our concern about the increase of deportations… Our concern, is to respect the rights of Mexicans living in the United States more, specifically the human rights.”
On Tuesday, Trump’s new immigration legislation essentially allows state and local law enforcement to act as immigration officers to deport any undocumented individuals. He also intends to apply this deportation guidance to non-Mexican citizens from all over Central America— by still sending them to Mexico, even though that’s not where they’re from.
As reported by CNN, when Tillerson arrived Wednesday Mexico’s Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Luis Videgaray Caso said publicly that he wanted to “make it clear, in the most emphatic way, that the Mexican government and the people of Mexico do not have to accept measures unilaterally imposed on a government by another government.”