President Trump is in a bind. We have unprecedented activity at the border. The Department of Homeland Security is running out of funds to handle the border crisis. We had 144,000 apprehensions at the border last month, a 32 percent increase. Congressional Democrats don’t want to give Trump the tools to combat this crisis, which they feel is a manufactured one. It’s not. With no funds for the wall, a growing anti-ICE sentiment, and the overall wartime mindset the Left has with this administration, the Trump White House has been forced to invoke emergency powers. Some Defense Department money is being siphoned off to build portions of the wall; a federal judge recently sided with the administration after House Democrats filed a legal action to block this move. Now, we have a new emergency power declaration coming concerning the tariffs with Mexico (via The Hill):
President Trump is planning to declare a new national emergency in order to implement sweeping tariffs on Mexico over the flow of Central American migrants to the U.S., according to a draft document of the declaration reviewed by The Hill.
According to the document, the new emergency is necessary due to “the failure of the Government of Mexico to take effective action to reduce the mass migration of aliens illegally crossing into the United States through Mexico.”
The new emergency declaration would follow a February emergency declaration, which Trump used to justify sending National Guard troops to support Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials at the southern border.
Trump on Friday threatened to impose a five-percent tariff on all Mexican goods crossing into the United States, which would increase by another five percent every subsequent month, capping at 25 percent in October.
The draft, which delineates how tariffs would be imposed on Mexican goods, mentions nine separate times Mexico's “failure” to control northward migration from Central America.
This is a breaking news story. We’ll keep you updated.
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UPDATE: We have reports that Mexico and the U.S. are close to deal that would deploy some 6,000 Mexican troops to the border and give the U.S. more wiggle room to deport asylum seekers. All of this, of course, is being hashed out to avoid Trump making good on his tariff threat. Mexico said if tariffs are applied, they will back out of this deal (via WaPo):
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U.S. and Mexican officials are discussing the outlines of a deal that would dramatically increase Mexico’s immigration enforcement efforts and give the United States far more latitude to deport Central Americans seeking asylum, according to a U.S. official and a Mexican official who cautioned that the accord is not final and that President Trump might not accept it.
Faced with Trump’s threat to impose steadily rising tariffs on goods imported from Mexico beginning Monday, Mexican officials have pledged to deploy up to 6,000 national guard troops to the area of the country’s border with Guatemala, a show of force they say will make immediate reductions in the number of Central Americans heading north toward the U.S. border.
The Mexican official and the U.S. official said the countries are negotiating a sweeping plan to overhaul asylum rules across the region, a move that would require Central Americans to seek refuge in the first country in which they arrive after leaving their homeland.
Under such a plan, the United States would swiftly deport to Mexico any Guatemalan asylum seekers who set foot on U.S. soil. And the United States would send Honduran and Salvadoran asylum applicants to Guatemala, whose government held talks last week with acting Homeland Security secretary Kevin McAleenan. Central American migrants who express a fear of death or torture if they are repatriated would be interviewed by U.S. asylum officers to determine whether the chances of such harm were more likely than not — a screening standard with a greater likelihood of rejection than current procedures.
Mexico has repeatedly said it will not accept the kind of “Safe Third Country” agreement that the United States has with Canada, a pact that requires asylum seekers to apply for refuge in whichever country they first arrive in, as each is considered safe. But the Mexican official said the government is willing to make asylum changes for the sake of a coordinated regional approach.
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