In an interview that was aired on Sunday, the president of Mexico reiterated his belief that only significant changes to US foreign policy would stop illegal immigration, calling Republican Donald Trump’s mantra that the US-Mexico border should be walled off nonsensical.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador responded negatively when asked if Trump will construct the promised wall if elected in November by CBS’s “60 Minutes.”
“It doesn’t work!” he said, speaking through a translator.
The president said that when Trump was last in office and seeking to build a wall, he highlighted for his US counterpart that smugglers had been able to dig tunnels under barriers already in place.
Trump “stayed quiet, and then he started laughing and told me ‘I can’t win with you,'” Lopez Obrador said.
The Mexican president’s comments against Trump and Joe Biden coincide with the two political rivals of the United States facing up in a rematch in 2020, with illegal immigration serving as a contentious campaign issue once more.
In response to the unprecedented number of migrants who have recently crossed the southern US border, Biden has been the target of bullying from Trump and his Republican party, and the Democrat is facing criticism from inside his own party over talks to tighten immigration laws.
The 70-year-old Lopez Obrador said that he assisted in securing a brief decline in the number of undocumented migrants seeking entry into the United States at the beginning of this year at Biden’s request.
He said that was partly due to Mexico being “more careful” about its own southern border, and that he had enlisted the help of Central American leaders.
“However, that is a short-term solution, not a long-term one,” he said, adding that Mexico wants “the root causes to be attended to, for them to be seriously looked at.”
As to Lopez Obrador’s statement to the White House, the United States should allocate billions annually to reduce poverty in Latin America, loosen sanctions on the radical left-wing governments in Venezuela and Cuba, and provide legal status to millions of Mexican immigrants residing in the country.
However, Lopez Obrador stated that “the flow of migrants… will continue” in the absence of such comprehensive reforms.
In response to the increasing calls from Republicans for a border shutdown as an emergency measure, Lopez Obrador brought up their respective countries’ economic dependence on one another.
“You would not be able to buy inexpensive cars if the border is closed. That is, you would have to pay $10,000, $15,000 dollars more for a car. There are factories in Mexico and there are factories in the United States that are fundamental for all the consumers in the United States and all the consumers in Mexico.”
In the interview, the president—who is set to leave office later this year—was also challenged on a number of domestic matters, most notably the recent controversy in which he disclosed a reporter’s private phone number.
When asked why he would do such a thing in a country where reporters are frequently harassed and murdered, Lopez Obrador said he “had no intention of harming her,” but was “responding to a libel.”
“Imagine what it means for this reporter to write that the president of Mexico has connections with drug traffickers… And without having any proof. That is a vile slander,” he said.
