Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said he believes former and president-elect Donald Trump’s threat to impose hefty tariffs on Mexico if the country does not work to curb the flow of immigration into the U.S. will pressure the country to break up existing caravans with a goal of reaching the border.
During a rally in North Carolina on Monday, Trump said he would “immediately” impose a 25 percent tariff on everything Mexico sends into the U.S. if the country doesn’t work to stop the “onslaught of criminals and drugs” crossing into the U.S.
Trump further added that he would go as far as to impose a 50 percent or 75 percent tariff on the country if the original 25 percent tariff does not motivate the nation to help curb illegal immigration.
Last month, Bensman was on the ground in southern Mexico to document the approximately 300,000-400,000 migrants in the cities of Tapachula and Villahermosa who collectively had a goal of reaching the U.S. southern border.
Bensman, at the time, said holding of migrants in southern Mexico is part of a deal the Biden administration made with the Mexican government to decrease the number of border crossings in an effort to avoid negative press coverage leading up to the November 5 general election.
Now, as the election has passed, Bensman said a portion of the migrants being held are currently making their way to the U.S. southern border on foot.
“On the morning of Election Day, two massive caravans set out to test the Mexican government’s commitment to holding back the human tide in those southern provinces,” Bensman explained on Thursday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Bensman went on to explain how the Mexican government’s response to the migrants making their way to the U.S. will serve as a “test” for how it will handle migrants amid Trumps’ threat of tariffs once he assumes office in January.
“The question is what is Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, the new Mexican president, going to do after the election’s over, and I think that the immigrants now are trying to test the Mexican government’s resolve post election. There’s probably 5,000 in two different caravans that left on election morning for the U.S. border,” Bensman said.
“I regard that as the vanguard of a test to see what Mexico is going to do here. They’re on the way, they’re walking, they’re on foot, so it’s going to take a couple of weeks for them to really move and get close to the border. Others are joining them as they pass through different cities and towns to do this,” Bensman added.
Noting how the president of Mexico vaguely acknowledged Trump’s threat, Bensman said he “hopes” the threat will “be enough” for the Mexican government to continue holding back migrants who want to illegally enter the U.S.
“I’m hoping that just the threat from civilian Donald Trump might be enough to have [President Sheinbaum Pardo] continue to break up those caravans and hold them back,” Bensman said.
With regards to the odds of Trump’s threat of tariffs helping curb illegal immigration, Bensman pointed to the 2019 and 2020 tariffs previously imposed which “worked wonders” to pressure the Mexican government to put in place a military blockade to prevent migrants from entering the U.S. illegally.
“Mexico’s economy relies almost entirely on its exports to the U.S. and I’m not talking about just oil, I’m talking about auto parts and cosmetics etc. The trade between the U.S. and Mexico supplanted Chinese trade with the U.S. – $500, $600 billion just this year in trade with the U.S. [The Mexican president] cannot turn her nose up at that. She can’t. It doesn’t matter how she feels about sovereignty and Donald Trump is exactly the kind of guy who will gleefully impose those tariffs, to bend Mexico to its will,” Bensman explained.
“The tariff threat is back. That’s what this really means. The tariff threat is back and the tariff threat worked wonders in 2019 in 2020 when Trump first put them into play to do this exact military blockade,” Bensman added.
Watch the full interview:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
