Mexico Establishes Migrant Intake Centers To Manage Mass Deportations From America
‘We are ready to receive you on this side of the border,’ Mexico’s interior minister, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, said.
Mexico is preparing to welcome back immigrants deported from America with open arms, launching a new intake program along the border.
The initiative, called “Mexico Embraces You,” was announced this week by Mexican officials for the plan that was put in place since President Trump made his campaign pledge to conduct widespread deportation of undocumented migrants.
The initiative will lead to a total of nine intake centers along the border, with nearly every branch of the Mexican government expected to assist by providing buses to transport returning nationals to their hometowns, providing medical care, and enrollment in social welfare programs, including pensions, paid apprenticeships, and $100 cash cards.
“We are ready to receive you on this side of the border,” Mexico’s interior minister, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, said at a recent news conference. “Repatriation is an opportunity to return home and be reunited with family.”
President Sheinbaum of Mexico disagrees with the planned deportations but said the country must carry out a contingency plan.
“It is always important to keep a cool head and refer to the signed decrees beyond the rhetoric itself; meaning, what truly matters in the strict sense of the law are the decrees signed by President Trump,” she said at a news conference. “We have our own immigration policy, but we are also a humanitarian government. If there is a person at the border, especially now, with such cold weather, we will clearly act in a humanitarian way; we will not leave people exposed to the elements.”
Ms. Sheinbaum has said initially that she would push for the Trump administration to deport migrants directly to their own countries but has since shifted her stance to accept deportees from other countries.
Tent shelters have already been erected in Ciudad Juarez along its border with the city of El Paso, Texas, with the first shelters being built at Nogales, Mexico, across from Nogales, Arizona, and the border cities of Piedras Negras and Matamoros in addition to existing facilities, according to the Associated Press.
At her daily press briefing, Ms. Sheinbaum said that the number of people deported on Tuesday was lower than the daily average of 500 from last year and that shelters had remained somewhat empty compared to the previous year when the level of migrants had soared.
