Mexico will not accept Trump's immigration plans, foreign minister says

Mexico has indicated it would not accept the Trump administration’s new immigration proposals, saying it would go to the United Nations to defend the rights of immigrants in the US.

Luis Videgaray, Mexico’s foreign minister, was responding to Donald Trump’s plans to enforce immigration rules more vigorously against undocumented migrants, which could lead to mass deportations to Mexico, not just of Mexicans but also citizens of other Latin American countries.

Calling the measure "unilateral" and "unprecedented," Videgaray said new immigration guidelines would top the agenda of meetings in Mexico City with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly.

“We are not going to accept it because we don’t have to accept it,” Videgaray said, according to the Reforma newspaper. “I want to make clear, in the most emphatic way, that the government of Mexico and the Mexican people do not have to accept measures that one government wants to unilaterally impose on another.”

The sweeping measures were announced in Washington on the eve of a visit to Mexico by the US secretaries of state and homeland security that had been aimed at salvaging bilateral relations, currently at their lowest point in at least three decades.

Mexico has warned that a breakdown in relations could affect its extensive cooperation on the fight against narcotics and on stemming the flow of Central American migrants that reach the US border.

Rex Tillerson and John Kelly are seeking to soothe Mexican fears in the wake of Trump’s new executive orders, the construction of a border wall that he insists Mexico be made to pay for, and his threat to unpick the 1994 Nafta free trade agreement that underpins the Mexican economy.

On Thursday, the two men, a former oil executive and a retired general, will meet the Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto, who abruptly cancelled a trip to Washington at the end of January after Trump sent out a tweet suggesting it was better not to come “if Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall”.

Talking points from a senior official show Mexicans plan to seek more information on Trump's executive orders at the summit. Officials plan to say, "We are worried about the consequences that these can have for Mexican nationals," in the United States, the notes show.

As part of its response, Videgaray said Mexico's foreign ministry would get involved in legal cases in the United States where it considered the rights of Mexicans had been violated.

"The Mexican government will take all the measures legally possible to defend the human rights of Mexicans abroad, especially in the United States," Videgaray said.

The visit, which will include meetings with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, as well as military, finance and interior officials, is supposed to focus on border security, law enforcement and trade, according to the state department.

Videgaray has placed high stakes on the visit. “This is a moment of definition: the decisions we make in the coming months will determine how Mexico and the United States coexist for the next decades,” he was quoted as saying at the G20 meeting in Bonn last week by the Los Angeles Times.