Mexico and Canada have begun a flurry of activity at their borders with the US in a show of willingness to clamp down on migrants ahead of a deadline on which President Donald Trump has threatened to impose punitive tariffs.
In the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez on the US border, workers began filling in a 300 metre tunnel this week used to smuggle migrants into Texas. The 1.8 metre-high tunnel, with electric cabling and ventilation, ran under the Río Bravo, also known as the Rio Grande, from central Juárez beside a major highway. US agents said they had discovered it earlier this month.
Mexico has set up large, air-conditioned temporary shelters for deportees, while President Claudia Sheinbaum said some non-Mexicans were among thousands of migrants that Mexico took back in Trump’s first week. She had earlier suggested her country could accept non-Mexican migrants as an offering to Trump.
Canada deployed newly leased Black Hawk patrol helicopters, extra dogs and 60 drones at its border with the US as part of its response to Trump’s demands that the two countries curb entry of illegal migrants and fentanyl.
Canada’s public safety minister David McGuinty said their effort “involves political outreach, official outreach and operational outreach”, including talks this week with Trump’s border tsar Tom Homan.
Officials in Mexico City and Ottawa rushed to demonstrate action after Trump threatened to impose tariffs of 25 per cent on their exports as early as February 1 if they failed to cut migration and the drugs trade.
If implemented, the threatened tariffs would send both economies into recession, upend supply chains in industries from cars to electronics, and push up prices for US consumers, analysts have said.
Trump briefly announced punitive tariffs on Colombia last week after it refused to accept two military aircraft carrying deportees, but lifted them when Bogotá swiftly backed down.
He has also declared a national emergency at the US-Mexico border, sent 1,500 additional troops, and cancelled legal-entry pathways created by his predecessor Joe Biden, including an app for asylum applications.
The measures have left thousands of migrants, including Argenis, a 26-year-old Venezuelan who had hoped to reunite with his brother in Texas, stranded in Mexican border cities.
“Videos came up on TikTok of people hugging their families. I was so excited to hug my family too,” he told the FT.
“[Then] I was depressed. I even deleted my WhatsApp. I didn’t want to speak to anyone.”
Trump put the US southern border at the heart of all three of his presidential campaigns, railing last year against record levels of illegal immigration under Biden.
Sheinbaum said on Monday that migration officials from both countries had held several virtual meetings and reached agreements, without offering further detail.
Mexico took back about 4,000 migrants in Trump’s first week, an uptick from the roughly 3,700 a week it took back last year, according to government data.
Mexico had already been increasing immigration enforcement at the US’s behest for more than a decade. Last year it stepped up checks and detentions further across the country, focusing on busing foreign migrants southwards.
Mexico is also under pressure over drug cartels that supply substances including the deadly opioid fentanyl to the US. Curbing that trade is difficult, with combined murders and disappearances in the country close to record highs.
Security Minister Omar García Harfuch said on Tuesday that since October more than 10,000 people had been detained for high-impact crimes such as murder and violent robbery, and more than 90 tonnes of drugs seized.
The situation on Canada’s border with the US differs from Mexico’s. Since June last year, US authorities have found around 100,000 people a month crossing from Mexico illegally, according to US Customs and Border Protection, but at the northern border with Canada the figure was about 15,000 a month.
Canada has said that only about 1 per cent of fentanyl entering the US is transported across its border. But that has not prevented Trump from threatening it, alongside Mexico. In recent months both Mexico and Canada have announced large drug busts.
Canadian foreign minister Mélanie Joly, who will travel to Washington DC to meet Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday, said this week she would also speak with Mexico, the UK and EU counterparts.
“At the heart of my conversations with my British colleagues and my European colleagues is going to be the question of how to respond to tariffs,” she said on Monday.
In December Canada announced an extra C$1.3bn (US $900mn) to bolster border security and the immigration system. It increased patrols and surveillance along the border, which stretches nearly 9,000km across land and water.
Xavi Delgado, of the Canada Institute at the Wilson Centre in Washington DC, said: “This has been a wake-up call for Ottawa. Trump has voiced frustration with Canada over it taking the US for granted.”
Mexico and Canada have lobbied lawmakers and others in the president’s circle, arguing that tariffs would be a “lose-lose” situation for all three countries.
Despite Trump’s crackdown, some migrants in Mexico remain hopeful. “I’m thinking of staying here quietly, waiting,” said Gabriel, a 23-year-old from Venezuela, at the border. “I feel that at any moment we’ll be able to cross legally, or something good will happen.”