Since taking office on Jan. 20, U.S. President Donald Trump has continued to threaten mass deportations as efforts to round up undocumented migrants continue apace, forcing Mexico’s government to redirect funds to agencies that handle migrants and refugees.
The newspaper El Universal reported on Monday that the Finance Ministry (Hacienda) has increased the National Migration Institute (INM) budget by 489% as compared to a year ago, shuffling funds from emblematic public works projects such as the Maya Train.
Although President Claudia Sheinbaum had insisted in December that her government was prepared to handle the mass deportations promised by Trump, El Universal said she had quietly been taking action to prioritize attention to migrants and refugees.
Hacienda’s fourth-quarter report indicates that the INM budget was hiked from 1.9 billion pesos (US $92 million) at the outset of 2024 to 11 billion pesos (US $532 million) by December 2024 and that Sheinbaum had overseen an injection of 4 billion pesos (US $193 million) in the fourth quarter alone.
The budget for the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR) also more than doubled over the course of 2024, its funding increasing from an initial allotment of 51.2 million pesos (US $2.5 million) to 107.6 million pesos (US $5.2 million) by the end of the year.
Among other things, the extra money has gone toward funding the México te Abraza program (“Mexico embraces you”) which comprises 10 welcome centers across the six states bordering the United States, each having the capacity to harbor 2,500 people.
On Jan. 15, the INM advertised a 179 million-peso contract (US $8.6 million) to provide food for foreign and national migrants who are deported from the United States to Mexico.
The budget increase comes as little surprise after two Mexican government sources involved in the early planning around possible deportations voiced concerns in December about the country’s preparedness.
“We are not going to have much room to maneuver to deal with such a large flow [of migrants] with such a reduced budget,” one of the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the news agency Reuters.
In recent years, Mexico has received upwards of 200,000 Mexicans a year deported from the U.S., Reuters reported.
Sheinbaum, who took office on Oct. 1, 2024, inherited a budget deficit of nearly 6%, the highest since the 1980s, and had vowed to bring public finances under control.
In December, the president dismissed the notion that the INM would require a bigger budget, saying it only required administrative reorganization to carry out its functions.
With reports from El Universal, Vanguardia and Reuters
It’s the same old question: Where’s the money? Mexico should do the same thing the u.s. is doing and ship the “refugees” back to their countries of origin. Besides, I don’t imagine most of them are going to want to stay in Mexico because they won’t get the handouts they get in America. The gravy train is over folks… time to go home.
The vast majority of Mexicans/South Americans that come to the US do so to work. Get out in the work world and you will clearly see this. In construction, grounds maintenance, cleaning, restaurants, many types of manufacturing facilities, produce…..countless areas Hispanics dominate in the workforce. This is because they do good work at a fair price. And they do it with a smile on their face. As long as the US provides that gravy train to their own citizens then workers will come to take up the slack. In our business we say bravo. And Gracias!
I agree that Mexicans have a superior work ethic and attitude. But the influx of millions of low-skilled people is not what America needs when automation is rapidly eliminating the need for such workers. Besides, not all the illegals are Mexican. America should control immigration and base it on the needs of the economy. If the countries the people are leaving are so bad, perhaps, if the u.s. wants to help them, the u.s. military could take out their corrupt governments and install a government that would work on behalf of their people. Of course you could say the same thing about the u.s. government..
Totally, we cant take care of our own needs and although every human needs assistance each country should assist their own citizens. It is a Globalist move to utilize migration as a weapon.
People bitch about immigrants taking jobs. Those immigrants are then gone. Then people bitch that those are not the jobs they wanted. Automation won’t be available to fill the huge holes and stuff won’t get done. Those same people will bitch that stuff is not getting done and stuff that they want is gone or too expensive. The snowflakes never quit bitching even when they get what they voted for. smh
The immigrants that come to the US work in jobs where automation is not (yet) an answer. Picking fruit and vegetables seems low on the totem pole until you realize that an experienced field hand knows which products are ready to be picked. And, when the US food bowls run short- the valuation will become evident through low food supplies and high market prices. The other jobs immigrants fill can be done with partial automation but if a floor opting machine spills paper from a basket and bumps a desk where paper also falls- which one will ot put back on the desk? Service workers have always been a backbone yo societies norms. When a place is kept tidy from the grounds to the floors, more respect takes place. Let’s respect the service workers and support them