Immigration across the southern border has escalated in recent months, leaving upper-level government functionaries distressed.
“The number [of migrants] that the federal government is talking about is impossible for us to deal with,” said a senior government official. That in turn prompted the host of BlazeTV’s “The News and Why It Matters” Sara Gonzales to reply, “What a bunch of racists.”
But the government official was Miguel Ángel Riquelme Solís, governor of Coahuila, Mexico, and he was speaking of immigrants crossing the Mexican southern border with Central America, and Gonzales added a laughing emoji when she tweeted her response.
In addition, Riquelme Solís’ opinion is generally shared by the Mexican population.
A face-to-face survey of 1,200 Mexican adults conducted by Mexico's Reforma newspaper, together with The Washington Post, revealed that 55 percent of Mexicans think their country should deport the migrants to their countries of origin, while only 33 percent think the migrants should be granted some form of temporary legal status.
More than 60 percent of those surveyed said that the migrants take jobs and benefits away from Mexican citizens, and create a burden on society.
The poll was conducted in response to an agreement reached last month between the governments of Mexico and the United States, in which Mexico agreed to step up its own immigration enforcement to ease the crisis at the U.S.-Mexican border.
After Congress repeatedly balked at providing funding to construct a “big, beautiful wall” at the U.S. southern border, President Donald Trump negotiated with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador — and Trump hung the promise of imposing crippling tariffs over the Mexican leader’s head.
Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy called the president’s use of tariffs in the negotiating process “really smart” during an interview last month with the BBC, adding that there was nothing "devious" about Trump’s actions.
At least some Mexican nationals disagree, however, and refer to López Obrador as a Trump puppet, according to the Post, which reported that “commentators suggested that Mexico may not have paid for Trump’s border wall, but it had effectively ‘become the wall.’”
Democratic lawmakers have repeatedly thrown the “racist” label at the president because of his adherence to the rule of law when it comes to illegal immigration. But adding the Mexican poll into the mix left BlazeTV’s Chad Prather feeling a bit confused.
“It’s so weird when brown people don’t want brown people around them. Possible that it’s culture and not race?” he asked. “Or maybe you just don’t want a**hole strangers on your property. Just a thought.”
The president has said repeatedly that he loves immigration — as long as it’s handled properly and according to the law. And to Prather’s point, the president wants to keep undesirables, such as MS-13 gang members, out.
The Federalist senior editor and frequent Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway observed that those “undesirables” may have a political connotation when it comes to some lawmakers — especially Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y.
“When Dick Durbin and Jerry Nadler began a formal citizenship inquiry to threaten Seb Gorka for his political views, I have to be honest that I don't remember the Twitter brigades freaking out about it,” she observed. “The great @davidharsanyi looked into attacks on his citizenship here.”
Sebastian Gorka is a British-born Hungarian-American who served as deputy assistant to Trump in the early days of his administration. In addition to being a military and intelligence analyst, he’s a rock-solid conservative and enthusiastic supporter of the president, which often places Gorka at odds with Democrats.
Gorka recalled that incident and concluded, “It’s only OK to threaten an immigrant if they’re not a Democrat.”
Given varying ideas of who’s desirable and not, the better course would be to simply enforce the rule of law as the president is doing — or at least trying to do.
During the past two years the United States has seen what happens when the border isn’t adequately protected. Now Mexico has a taste of it as well and is proof that it’s not a matter of race — it’s a matter of doing what’s right.
Between the two countries maybe something will get solved. Congress isn’t likely to do it — not with the likes of Durbin and Nadler, and certainly not with a Democratic-controlled House.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to BizPac Review and Liberty Unyielding. He’s also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter, who can often be found honing his skills at the range. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.