Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador affirmed that the plan to close the border between the United States and Mexico with a wall, demanded by Republican candidate Donald Trump, was illusory in an interview broadcast on Sunday. Asked on CBS’s “60 Minutes” whether Donald Trump, if elected US president in November, would build the promised wall, the Mexican president replied: “no.” “It doesn’t work!” he added according to an English translation of his remarks, calling instead for reform of American foreign policy to discourage illegal immigration.
When Donald Trump was in office and sought to build a wall, the Mexican president said he explained to him that smugglers had managed to dig tunnels under the barriers already in place. Donald Trump “stayed silent, then he started laughing and said to me, ‘I can’t win with you,'” he continued. US President Joe Biden is set to face Donald Trump again in November’s presidential election, in a remake of the 2020 vote, with illegal immigration once again at the heart of the campaign. Donald Trump and his Republican Party have slammed Joe Biden after a record number of migrants crossed the US southern border.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, 70, said that at Joe Biden’s request, he helped secure a temporary drop earlier this year in the number of illegal migrants trying to enter the United States . This drop was achieved by Mexico being “more attentive” to its own southern border and to the help of Central American leaders, he noted. “However, this is a short-term solution and not a long-term one,” he said, adding that Mexico wants “the root causes” of illegal immigration to be addressed. .
Radical reforms or “the flow of migrants will continue”, warns the Mexican president
For the Mexican president, Washington should devote billions of dollars each year to reduce poverty in Latin America, ease sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba and grant legal status to millions of Mexicans living in the United States. Without these radical reforms, “the flow of migrants (…) will continue,” declared Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Faced with Republicans who are calling for an emergency closure of the border, the Mexican president recalled the mutual economic dependence of the two countries. “You won’t be able to buy cheap cars if the border is closed,” he warned. The Mexican president, who will leave office at the end of the year, was also questioned on several national issues, including his choice to publicly reveal the personal telephone number of a journalist, which caused a scandal.
Asked about this approach, in a country where journalists are frequently harassed and murdered, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador declared that he “did not intend to harm him”, but that he was “responding to defamation “. “Imagine what it means for this journalist to write that the president of Mexico has links to drug traffickers (…) And without having any proof. It is a vile slander,” he declared .