(Bloomberg) -- Mexican Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard said that the nation's strategy to stop undocumented migrants in response to demands from U.S. President Donald Trump is succeeding and that flows have been cut by 56% in three months.
Ebrard, who will head to Washington for meetings at the White House on Tuesday, said that measures including the deployment of more than 25,000 National Guard members to help on migration have reduced illegal flows to about 63,000 people in August from 144,000 in May.
Ebrard said on Friday he doesn't expect Trump to repeat his threat of tariffs given the reduction in arrivals from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. He reiterated that his nation wouldn't accept a deal sought by the U.S. in June which would require asylum seekers to apply in Mexico before doing so in the U.S.
A so-called safe-third country agreement like the one Guatemala accepted in July “goes against the interests of Mexico,” Ebrard told reporters, adding that he couldn't rule out that the U.S. may ask for it again. “It's unfair and it's not equitable.”
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Trump warned at the end of May that he'd slap a 5% tariff on all imports from Mexico, and then steadily ratchet it up until the government of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took effective action to stop the flow of people. The threat was withdrawn after Mexico agreed on a series of measures to stop the surge.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at the end of July after a meeting with Ebrard that Mexico still needed to do more to deter illegal crossings. AMLO, as the leftist president is known, has repeatedly said that the long-term solution to migration is development for southern Mexico and Central America.
--With assistance from Cyntia Barrera Diaz.
To contact the reporter on this story: Eric Martin in Mexico City at emartin21@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Juan Pablo Spinetto at jspinetto@bloomberg.net, Matthew Bristow
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