A new immigration policy established by the trump administration seeks to deport many Undocumented Immigrants who crossed the Southern Border "back" to Mexico, regardless of their nationality. This policy was discovered last weekend when several Memos designed for circulation inside the Trump administration were leaked. John Kelly, The Secretary of Homeland Security, and Rex Tillerson, The Secretary of State are in Mexico this week and it is likely this controversial policy will be strongly debated.
US/Mexican relations have deteriorated, and continue to deteriorate, indeed things were soured further two days ago when President Trump referred to the current spike of mass deportations to Mexico as a “military operation” against “really bad dudes”.
This is on top of the administration’s insistence on building the border wall which may cost as much as $10.5 billion.
The legality?
It is likely that this policy will be extremely difficult to implement if it is even possible. Already the legality of this policy has been contested, and it is highly likely that Mexico will resist this policy at every level. Indeed for this to even go ahead Mexico would need to agree to it on some level which is extremely doubtful.
Furthermore, as CSNBC journalist Jake Novac noted, the successful implementation of this policy will be hugely expensive and logistically complicated. As many new deportation centers will need to be constructed both in the US and in Mexico.
With no initial US attention to discover which undocumented immigrant is from what country, Mexico would need to create a titanic infrastructure simply to determine the country of origin of each person, even if that person turns out to Mexican.
The View from Mexico
The Mexican foreign minister Luis Videgaray has criticized this policy by stating that a country cannot “accept unilateral decisions imposed by one country on another”.
Mexico also expressed that it would debate the issue in the United Nations if necessary.
This reaction from Mexico could stop the policy in its tracks as mentioned before, Mexico would need to support it for it to go ahead. However, it seems possible that a version of the policy could be created. Indeed it is believed that the leaked memos were not in a fully finished state.
