In the White House, the New York tycoon signed several executive orders, including immigration ones, and there he declared “I am in favor of legal immigration, we need people.”
He also drew what the relationship that the United States will have with Latin America will be like: “the relationship is going to be great. They need us more than they need us. Everyone needs us.”
Declaration of the southern border in emergency
This order will allow the militarization of the southern border of the United States to prevent the entry of people without documents from Mexico.
Since Trump’s first term in the US Presidency (2017 to 2021), this declaration was applied, which then included the allocation of 2.5 billion dollars to be able to build his “wall.” In 2021, now former President Joe Biden rescinded it.
For Leticia Calderón Chelius, researcher at the Mora Institute, the declaration has more media and “scenographic” effect, since what is relevant are the policies of immediate detention of illegal entries and expulsion of migrants.
The return of “Stay in Mexico”
This strategy was also applied by Trump in 2019 and consists of all asylum seekers must wait in Mexican territory while their cases are resolved in the United States.
This plan is officially known as the Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP) and was applied with the argument that this border closure was required due to the risk posed by the Covid pandemic.
That plan ended in February 2021 and during its application it caused hundreds of people to live in improvised shelters and camps in the border area, but on the Mexican side, which generated a migration crisis in Mexico.
Upon Biden’s arrival to the United States government, he reported that this MPP led to the return of 68,700 people to Mexico to await their appointments before the US immigration courts.
According to the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), in that period 112, 391 people remained in shelters in various border cities.
