Top U.S. Officials Met With Defiance in Visit to Mexico

Secretaries of State and Homeland Security encounter objections to hard U.S. line on deportations

MEXICO CITY—Top U.S. officials arrived for talks here Wednesday to find a defiant Mexican government refusing to accept President Donald Trump’s tougher immigration and deportation policies.

.. “We won’t accept it because we don’t have to,” he added, in an apparent reference to U.S. plans to return illegal migrants to Mexico, regardless of their nationality.

 Mr. Videgaray’s declaration spelled trouble for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, who a White House official said were sent to “talk through the implementation” of Mr. Trump’s guidelines.
.. The White House on Wednesday brushed aside the ramped-up tensions between the two countries. “The relationship with Mexico is phenomenal right now,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said.
.. Mr. Trump’s new guidelines, which flesh out executive orders signed by the president last month, call for enlisting local U.S. authorities to enforce immigration law, jailing more people pending hearings, and sending border-crossers back to Mexico to await proceedings, even if they aren’t Mexican.
It is that detail of the new plan that has kindled the most acrimony in Mexico. Mexican officials said it meant the U.S. would deposit Mexicans and non-Mexicans alike on the southern side of the border, whether Mexico agreed to the plan or not. Mexican officials view the plan as an affront to Mexican sovereignty.

U.S. statistics show most of those entering the U.S. illegally through the southwest border are from countries other than Mexico.

.. Of more than 400,000 people apprehended in the year ending Sept. 30, more than 220,000 weren’t from Mexico
.. The guidelines issued separately this week suggested the U.S. would seek to have people arriving from countries other than Mexico await their deportation proceedings in Mexico rather than in the U.S. At the end of that process, those people would be returned to their country of origin, officials said.
.. Ahead of the visit, Mexican officials suggested that a U.S. pullout from Nafta would affect all aspects of U.S.-Mexico ties.
“Logically, there wouldn’t be incentives to continue collaborating on the issues most important to national security in North America, such as the issue of migration,
.. Mexico and the U.S. have collaborated for decades on efforts to fight drug cartels, police the border and prevent terror attacks.
.. Mexican officials want to use issues including national security and migration as leverage for future talks about Nafta, experts said