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Mexico City (People’s Daily) - Mexico will increase the number of troops of the National Gendarmerie on the southern border to strengthen security, it announced earlier this week, while noting that it will also respect the human rights of Central American immigrants who cross the country to the United States.
"We have talked about border security, about strengthening our southern border," said Alfonso Navarrete, Mexican Secretary of the Interior, when he met with the governor of Chiapas.
Many illegal immigrants from Central America enter Mexico through Chiapas.
The decision made by the government is considered a response to the pressure from the United States, local media reported.
Last week, Trump was infuriated that more than 1,000 immigrants mostly come from violence-wracked Honduras and other Central American countries entered the US through Mexico.
"Mexico is doing very little, if not NOTHING, at stopping people from flowing into Mexico through their Southern Border, and then into the US,” Trump tweeted on April 1.
“They laugh at our dumb immigration laws. They must stop the big drug and people flows, or I will stop their cash cow, NAFTA. NEED WALL!"
The US president signed a proclamation last week authorizing the National Guard to assist the border patrol, with US media reports say Trump wants to put 2,000 to 4,000 troops to its southern border.
Governors of Mexico-bordering states Arizona and Texas announced immediately that they'd be cooperating with the new policy. New Mexico and California also accepted it this week.
The commitments made by four states have allowed about 2,400 troops to the border – meeting the minimum of Trump's target, according to The Washington Post.
But just after Trump signed the proclamation, The Post said in an editorial that, "President Trump escalated his verbal fusillade against immigrants this week by announcing a foolish plan to deploy troops along the Mexican border. Such a move has at best a tenuous basis in law and none in logic, and it will burn through federal funds better spent elsewhere."
Before the eighth American Summit, which will take place in Peru on Friday and Saturday, Trump changed his original plan of visiting but sent Vice President Mike Pence to the meeting instead of himself.
This leaves people wondering if Trump does not care about the relationship with Latin America and if he has a strategy for Latin America.
However, in regards to building a border wall to "protecting" the US from immigrants, Trump is always enthusiastic. "... Release known dangerous criminals into communities across the state.
“All citizens have the right to be protected by Federal law and strong borders", Trump tweeted on March 28, following his comment that "Much can be done with the $1.6 Billion given to building and fixing the border wall" on March 25.
