The right to asylum is “sacred,” President López Obrador said today as his government moves to implement stronger measures to reduce migration flows to the northern border.

Speaking at his morning press conference, the president said that previous federal governments – even “conservative, retrograde” ones – always respected that right, declaring that “it’s already been planted within Mexico’s foreign policy.”

As part of a deal to stave off tariffs threatened by United States President Donald Trump, Mexico last week undertook to increase security measures to curb irregular migration, a commitment which includes the deployment of 6,000 National Guard troops to the southern border.

Even before that commitment, human rights and migrant advocacy groups warned that the government’s increasingly militarized approach to combating people’s transit through Mexico posed a threat to migrants’ rights.

But the president pledged today that migrants in Mexico will be both respected and protected.

“The right to asylum that we have to guarantee is a sacred right for all Mexicans and in these times in which we are attending to the migration issue, we are always going to treat migrants with respect and give them protection . . .” López Obrador said.

“I’ve said it [before] and I repeat it, in this situation we’re going through now, we’re going to be very respectful of the government of the United States, of President Donald Trump and more than anything of the American people, but at the same time we’re going to respect migrants’ human rights,” he added.

“How is that balance going to be maintained? Well, that has to do with the noble function of politics, sometimes it’s scorned [but] it’s possible to avoid confrontation, that’s why politics was invented, to avoid confrontation, to avoid war.”

In an unusually short press conference by the president’s standards, López Obrador said the government’s “complete” plan to curb migration will be presented tomorrow.

Source: Reforma (sp)