Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
The newspaper Reforma announces that 5 million Mexicans are likely to be deported by Donald Trump’s government starting tomorrow, January 20, 2025. The relevance of the data is not only the enormous number of undocumented Mexicans living in the United States. It is the confirmation that Mexicans are the largest nationality of undocumented migrants in that country. This is a reflection of our failure to respond to the needs of our population, both in terms of employment, security, and health. Nothing to be proud of.
At the same time, it is incredible to review the data of the votes received by Donald Trump to confirm the swing of Latino votes in favor of the Republicans. A vote full of self-conscious desires to be with the perceived winner and an ancestral spirit of self-punishment. We must tell this population that they have every human right to migrate from country to country seeking to improve their living conditions. There is nothing to be ashamed of.
What reigns in the United States is a state of confusion as to when, where, and how this deportation process will take place. According to news reports, the Trump administration plans to start its deportations in Chicago. It is convenient because it is a city governed by Democrats and has a strong union tradition. Thus, the Republicans have the excuse that the Democrats are to blame for giving refuge to “excessive” numbers of refugees from other countries.
For the time being, Trump said that the first three million deportees will be those who have a criminal record in the United States. He referred to drug traffickers and drug dealers or gang members.
However, 23 countries refuse to receive their citizens expelled from the United States as illegal aliens. Some of these countries are China, India, Cuba, Haiti, and Afghanistan. U.S. immigration authorities have singled out Cuba as the country that categorically refuses to receive its citizens deported from the United States.
This situation raises the issue of a safe third country. Mexico has already declared that it does not accept being considered a “safe third country” in the eventuality of the deportation of millions of people of various nationalities who, as has been mentioned, cannot return to their countries of origin because their countries do not accept them.
However, Marcelo Ebrard, the previous administration’s secretary of foreign affairs, accepted that Mexico was a “safe third country,” although he denied it. President Lopez Obrador allowed this to ingratiate himself with Trump.
Trump speaks outrageously about deporting millions of people. However, during his tenure as president, he only deported 766,000 people. Bill Clinton deported over 7 million people, George W Bush 4 million, Barack Obama deported 2 million, and Biden deported 890 thousand. The Democrats deported millions in response to the demands of their union leaders. The Republicans because their electoral clientele felt the threat of “other races”. Today, Trump managed to provoke mass hysteria over American fear of the reported “decline” in their quality of life, getting even some of those “invaders” to vote for him.
Looking at the actual data and considering what Trump actually did in the first administration, it is foreseeable that he will not exceed his previous numbers by much.
Notably, in his confirmation hearing before the Senate, Marco Rubio, Trump’s future Secretary of State, dedicated a few minutes to the immigration issue. When he spoke about Mexico, he basically referred to the problem of drug trafficking, security, and trade relations from the renegotiation of the CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC, in addition to the competition between the United States and China. There was no obsession with the immigration issue, which is very striking.
Was it simply a rhetorical tool, obviously very effective, to win the elections when the real interest lies elsewhere?
@rpascoep
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