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Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has sought to clarify details of a conversation she had with US President-elect Donald Trump, after the two leaders offered differing accounts of the call.
Following Wednesday’s call, Trump said Sheinbaum had “agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border”.
This prompted Sheinbaum to say she had merely reiterated Mexico’s position, which she said was “not to close borders but to build bridges between governments and people”.
“We discussed Mexico’s strategy on the migration phenomenon, and I shared that caravans are not arriving at the northern border because they are being taken care of in Mexico,” she wrote on X. “We also discussed strengthening collaboration on security issues within the framework of our sovereignty and the campaign we are carrying out in the country to prevent the consumption of fentanyl.”
The two presidents’ call comes days after Trump announced he would impose, via an executive order on the first day of his presidency, 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada. “This Tariff,” he began, “will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!”
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, the Mexican president said she did not specifically discuss tariffs in the phone call with Trump but that they had addressed immigration and fentanyl trafficking – the reasons Trump had named for imposing the tariffs in the first place.
Under US diplomatic pressure, Mexico has been conducting its largest ever migrant crackdown, bussing and flying non-Mexican migrants to the country’s south, far from the US border.
But Trump campaigned on a promise to seal the US-Mexico border and his threat to impose 25% tariffs was seen as an attempt to force Mexico into doing more to stop the migrants from reaching the US southern border.
The Mexican government has in turn demanded that the US take action to stop the flow of weapons being smuggled from the US into Mexico.
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