MEXICO CITY – There is no question that immigration was a defining issue in last month’s US presidential election. Donald Trump used the growing number of asylum seekers and economic migrants entering the United States from early 2021 through the beginning of this year to argue that President Joe Biden’s administration – including his vice president, and Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris – had been “soft on immigration.” This narrative helped Trump win the election. But how credible was it?
Trump’s campaign narrative left out a few crucial facts – not least that immigration flows across the US border with Mexico fell sharply this year. But perhaps more interesting is what happened just before this shift. On December 1, 2023, the head of the National Institute of Migration (INM) – Mexico’s federal immigration agency – announced that the institute had run out of money and would thus halt migrant transfers and deportations and suspend migration-related patrols across the country.
That month, US border authorities reported 249,741 “encounters” with migrants crossing the US-Mexico border – the highest number ever recorded in a single month – with as many as 13,000 occurring in a single day. In an effort to manage the surge, the US shut down important railroad crossings in Lukeville, Arizona, and in Eagle Pass and El Paso, Texas.
Moreover, on December 27, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas made an unscheduled visit to Mexico City to urge the country’s president at the time, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (widely known as AMLO), to restart efforts to curb migration. AMLO agreed, and migration flows soon plummeted. In August 2024, the US Border Patrol recorded fewer than 60,000 “encounters” with migrants crossing the US-Mexico border.
These are the facts. What is missing is a clear explanation of why AMLO’s administration halted its efforts to manage migration when it did. Anyone familiar with the Mexican budget process can tell you that if a crucial agency like the INM ran out of money, the finance-ministry software would immediately and automatically send it resources to tide it over until a formal, lasting budgetary solution could be found – say, when the next fiscal year begins. It would not be allowed simply to stop functioning – unless another factor came into play.
Now we enter into the realm of speculation – well-informed and credible, but impossible to verify. Biden, the Democrats’ candidate until his withdrawal in July 2024, was acutely aware of the damage the migration surge could do to his presidential campaign. He had been a junior senator in 1980, when Fidel Castro announced that any Cuban who wanted to emigrate was free to board a boat to the US at the Port of Mariel. By the time the Mariel boatlift ended that October, some 125,000 Cuban refugees had landed in Florida, severely harming President Jimmy Carter’s re-election bid.
It is thus entirely possible – even likely – that Biden cut a deal, tacit or explicit, with AMLO early in his term: limit migration flows, and the US will ignore the Mexican administration’s transgressions, from human-rights abuses to violations of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). So, when migrant flows increased, Biden pushed back. But, instead of falling into line, AMLO recognized that he had the power to undermine Biden’s candidacy by effectively halting curbs on migration. And he used it.
Appearances notwithstanding, AMLO may well have preferred Trump to Biden. He had gotten along relatively well with Trump when their terms previously overlapped, in 2018-20, perhaps owing to their shared affinity for transactional engagement, their view of themselves as “outsiders,” and their propensity for outré conduct.
AMLO might have determined that his hand-picked successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, would fare better with Trump than with the alternative, especially with AMLO close by, ready to jump in if needed. This would afford the former president greater opportunity to continue influencing Mexican politics. While AMLO’s term had already ended by the time Harris replaced Biden in the race, the switch would not have changed his position.
The idea that a Mexican president could bend a US presidential election to their will might sound farfetched. But the figures suggest that AMLO could quickly slash the number of people attempting to cross into the US. And Mexico has sustained this enforcement effort for close to a year now, without a new migrant surge materializing. If AMLO had the power to influence immigration flows into the US, why would he refrain from using it to give his preferred candidate a boost?
If this really happened, plenty of questions remain. Did AMLO concoct his scheme to influence the US election deliberately and consciously, or was it more of an intuitive decision? How did the Americans convince him to reverse course and suppress migrant flows so quickly at the end of last year? What, if anything, did they offer in exchange? We will probably never know the answers to these questions. Nonetheless, anyone who still thinks that foreign governments cannot have a decisive impact on US elections should think again.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2024.