Even Before Taking Office, Trump Puts Mexico On Spot — Stop the Caravans Now; To President-Elect Trump: Beware of Duplicitous Mexican ‘Ant Operations’ to Hide a Mad Border Rush

By admin On Nov 18, 2024

Even before taking office, Trump puts Mexico on spot — stop the caravans now:

Even before the US polls opened Tuesday, a vanguard of immigrants at least 5,000 strong set out on a long march from deep southern Mexico to the US southern border.

The purpose: to test whether new Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum will use the military to stop them now that the American election is over.

No less at stake in this fresh northward moving caravan challenge is whether hundreds of thousands more pooled up behind them in southern Mexico — with thousands more a day crossing into Mexico from Guatemala — will observe an unimpeded passage for this vanguard and follow it in a massive human swell that would presumably last until Donald Trump is sworn in January 20.

But Trump isn’t waiting. Just a day before the caravans launched and he won his election, Trump threatened massive, debilitating tariffs on Mexican exports if Sheinbaum lets caravans make it to the border before he gets into office.

“I’m going to inform [Mexico’s president] on day one or sooner that if they don’t stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs coming into our country, I’m going to immediately impose a 25% tariff on everything they send into the United States of America,” Trump declared at his Raleigh, NC, rally on Monday.

“If that doesn’t work,” he added, “I’ll make it 50, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll make it 75. Then I’ll make it 100.”

Recent history shows that this warning shot that Trump fired over the presidential palace has very real potential to impede any mad final mass dash on the southern border during the coming transition period — and much more.

Recall that last December, President Biden struck a backroom deal with Mexico City to alleviate the political spectacle of a badly congested southern border for the coming 2024 political campaign season. For 10 months straight, the deal has had 32,500 Mexican troops and even more federales round up tens of thousands of intending border-crossers from the country’s north and ship them by force to a militarized blockade of its southern provinces.

The operation, known in the Mexican media as “Operation Carousel,” worked wonders, cutting in half world-record illegal border crossings last fall within its first month alone and more every month since.

But no one really knows what would become of Operation Carousel once the American election was over, with Mexico feeling its obligation to the Biden-Harris campaign was now met. —>READ MORE HERE

To President-Elect Trump: Beware of Duplicitous Mexican ‘Ant Operations’ to Hide a Mad Border Rush:

In a New York Post column this week, I revised my earlier dark warnings that Mexico would likely unleash hundreds of thousands of migrants yearning to cross the U.S. Southwest border before Donald Trump could win a second term, take office, and dam the whole border up.

I wrote in the Post that there’s now pretty good reason for more optimism that Mexico’s new leftist president, Claudia Sheinbaum, may instead intervene and block the first migrant caravans at least 5,000 strong that set out from deep southern Mexico on Election Day morning and are still moving this way to test her will to intercede.

Remember that Mexico has been holding back the human tide since last December, when President Joe Biden struck a backroom deal with Mexico City to alleviate the ruinous political spectacle of a badly congested southern border for the coming 2024 political campaign season. For 10 months straight, the deal has had 32,500 Mexican troops and even more federales round up tens of thousands of intending border-crossers from the country’s north and ship them by force to a militarized blockade in its southern states.

Within a month, the number of illegal crossings fell by half and kept declining. Mexican media call the endeavor “Operation Carousel”.

But now that the election is over and Mexico’s end of the bargain is supposedly fulfilled, will Sheinbaum maintain or dismantle Operation Carousel for a Donald Trump America as the new caravans test her resolve in the coming weeks?

The odds have just tilted in favor of Mexican keeping up its efforts, I wrote in the Post, because at his last campaign rally Monday night, Donald Trump warned Sheinbaum that he would inflict harsh economic pain if she let immigrants reach the U.S. Southwest Border.

“I’m going to inform [Mexico’s president] on day one or sooner that if they don’t stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs coming into our country, I’m going to immediately impose a 25 percent tariff on everything they send into the United States of America,” Trump declared at his Raleigh, N.C., rally on Monday.

“If that doesn’t work,” he added. “I’ll make it 50, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll make it 75. Then I’ll make it 100.”

But America and Trump should beware of a well-worn Mexican stealth scheme I’ve long called out as “ant operations”, which have enabled Mexico to allow mass illegal immigration in a manner that greatly reduces its visibility and provides plausible deniability that Mexico did anything that could trigger Trump reprisals.

No less at stake in this fresh northward moving caravan challenge is whether Sheinbaum will release hundreds of thousands more pooled up in southern Mexico — with thousands more a day crossing into Mexico from Guatemala, shut them down under Trump’s tariff threat … or do ant operations to clear her country out at U.S. expense and deny it before and after Trump takes office.