MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico opened the possibility Friday of receiving non-Mexican migrants deported by the United States after initially saying they would push President-elect Donald Trump to return other nationalities directly to their countries of origin.
President Claudia Sheinbaum said during her daily press briefing that in cases where the U.S. would not return migrants to their countries “we can collaborate through different mechanisms.” She did not offer details, but Mexico could limit it to certain nationalities or request compensation from the U.S. to move the deportees from Mexico to their home countries.
“There will be time to speak with the United States government if these deportations really happen, but we will receive them here, we are going to receive them properly and we have a plan,” she said. Sheinbaum had prefaced her comments by saying Mexico is not in favor of them.
Trump has promised to begin massive deportations. Critics have observed that there will be logistical challenges to significantly ramping up from the already high deportation numbers.
The deportations would be immediately felt in northern Mexico’s border cities, which struggle with high levels of organized crime and where non-Mexican migrants would make easy targets for kidnapping and extortion.
That happened during Trump’s first term, when thousands seeking U.S. asylum were forced to wait out the process in Mexico. Many thousands more migrants who crossed into the U.S. were sent back to Mexico under a public health provision held over from the COVID-19 pandemic.
In December, Sheinbaum had said she planned to ask Trump to deport non-Mexicans directly to their home countries.
Mexico, like any other country, is not obligated to accept non-Mexican migrants, but it has agreed to do so in the recent past, especially from countries like Cuba and Venezuela, which often refuse deportation flights from the United States, but may accept them from Mexico.
Mexico temporarily stopped deportations in December 2023 due to a lack of funds and they were substantially reduced during 2024 compared to 2023 and 2022.
Mexico wants to host a meeting of the region’s foreign ministers this month to discuss immigration.
