Trump migration deal meets mounting resistance in Mexico

MEXICO CITY - Resistance is growing in Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's ruling coalition to a migration deal struck last week with US President Donald Trump to avert punitive trade tariffs as the implications of the accord become clearer.

Senior lawmakers in Lopez Obrador's leftist National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) have pushed back against the suggestion Mexico could submit to Trump's demand to become a buffer zone to keep migrants out of the United States who are traveling up from Central America.

That opposition could aggravate tensions between Mexico and Trump in a simmering border row that has threatened to tip Latin America's second-largest economy into recession.

Trump has vowed to slap tariffs of at least 5 percent on all Mexican goods sold to the United States if Lopez Obrador's government does not meet his migration demands. The tariffs could rise to as high as 25 percent, he said.

Few details were made public when the deal was announced on Friday, but this week officials revealed Mexico might change its laws to placate Trump if it cannot contain rising migrant numbers within a 45-day window set out under the agreement.

That could turn Mexico into a so-called "safe third country," forcing it to handle asylum applications from migrants who reached the United States via Mexico because they had first set foot on Mexican soil.

Mexico's Congress has not warmed to the idea.

Porfirio Munoz Ledo, a MORENA veteran who is president of the lower house of Congress, said Washington's safe third country demand would be an unacceptable loss of sovereignty.

"They want to turn this country into a cage," he said in Congress on Wednesday. Later, he told Mexican radio that Trump was using "economic terror" to pressure Mexico and that the country should not give in.

MORENA's leader in the Senate, Ricardo Monreal, said on Monday that a safe third country agreement would be "inadmissible" for the legislature.

Lopez Obrador has largely left it to his foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard, who negotiated the agreement with the United States, to answer questions about the deal.

But he has also defended the accord, declaring himself "very happy" with it "because we avoided an economic crisis."

There are signs the public is less convinced.

Roy Campos, head of polling firm Mitofsky, said the deal was "not well received." The pollster's daily barometer of support for Lopez Obrador has slipped by over a percentage point to 63.3 percent in the week since the agreement was announced.

Prior to the deal, his ratings had risen for two weeks.

Reuters