Washington, D.C. (January 20, 2020) - President Trump, not the divided U.S. Congress, can be credited with ending the mass illegal migration crisis at the border. Absent permanent legislative prescriptions by that Congress, Trump's success is tenuous and impermanent because, as this video report from Mexico's southern border shows, it depends almost entirely on political winds in other countries, especially Mexico, and on the whims of their leaders.
Understanding how and why the wave broke is essential to future responses to similar unwanted population transfers over the U.S.-Mexico and Mexico-Guatemala borders, especially as new Central American migrant caravans form and set out to test the new defenses.
CIS Senior National Security Fellow Todd Bensman commented, "Few in the United States are giving the administration credit, but a great many migrants trapped along the Mexico-Guatemala blame President Donald Trump for their inability to reach the U.S. border. Many are deciding to stay in Mexico for the next 10 months in a gambit that Trump will lose the election and Democrats will clear the path of his obstructions.” He continued, “They discovered what I did on this trip: under the Trump administration, the route to America is no longer wide-open."
Bensman recently returned from Mexico's southern border with Guatemala, spending almost two weeks in Tapachula, Chiapas, and Guatemala's northern highlands, where he interviewed migrants, government officials, and military personnel.
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