Mexico doesn’t agree with immigration raids targeting people working “honestly” in the United States.
President Claudia Sheinbaum said Thursday that she conveyed that message to United States Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau during their meeting in Mexico City on Wednesday.
Speaking at her morning press conference, Sheinbaum said that she and other Mexican officials discussed a range of issues with Landau, who was accompanied by U.S. Ambassador Ron Johnson during the meeting at the National Palace.
“We showed him the security results, [we spoke about] migration issues, we spoke about the defense of our migrant brothers and sisters, [we said] we didn’t agree with raids being used to detain people who work honestly in the United States,” she said.
Sheinbaum said she told Landau that the arrest of immigrant workers in the United States doesn’t just “harm” the workers themselves, but also the United States economy.
“We don’t agree with this scheme of criminalizing working people,” she told reporters.
While Mexicans in the United States send tens of billions of dollars to Mexico in remittances each year, the president and other Mexican officials have stressed that some 80% of their earnings remain in the U.S.
Sheinbaum said that Landau told her that he would convey Mexico’s opposition to raids against immigrant workers both to the State Department and President Donald Trump.
“What we want is recognition of the Mexican community [in the United States], of the honest, noble work they all do,” she said.
“… [Landau] said he was going to pass on this message. And I said it was one of the issues we wanted to speak about with President Trump the day we’re at the G7 [Summit],” Sheinbaum said.
Her meeting with Landau, a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico, came after immigration raids in Los Angeles last week triggered large protests in the city. Sheinbaum said Wednesday that 61 Mexicans had been detained in the raids and were being held in detention centers in Los Angeles. She has condemned violence during the L.A. protests, and promptly rejected a claim by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem that she had encouraged “violent protests” in the city.
Noem accuses Sheinbaum of ‘encouraging violent protests’ in LA: Tuesday’s mañanera recapped
Also present at the National Palace meeting were Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Minister Juan Ramón de la Fuente and Security Minister Omar García Harfuch.
It was held just six days before Sheinbaum is expected to hold her first in-person talks with Trump during the G7 Summit in Canada.
Sheinbaum: We have ‘various issues’ with the United States
Sheinbaum described her meeting with Landau as a “courtesy meeting.”
“He came to introduce himself in his new assignment in the State Department of the government of President Trump,” she said.
“And — he said — to seek the best [possible] relationship between Mexico and the United States,” Sheinbaum said.
“… It was a good meeting,” she said.
Later in her press conference, Sheinbaum noted that there are a range of “issues” (and tensions) in the Mexico-United States relationship, and said they were discussed with Landau.
“There’s the cattle issue,” she said, referring to the United States’ suspension of livestock imports from Mexico due to the detection of New World screwworm cases in Mexican cattle.
“[There is] the issue of taxes on remittances, there is the steel and aluminum [tariff],” Sheinbaum said.
She said that she pointed out to Landau that Mexico imports more steel and aluminum from the United States than it exports to its northern neighbor, and stressed that “it’s necessary to reach an agreement” on the trade of those metals.
The Bloomberg news agency reported earlier this week that Mexico and the United States were “closing in on a deal” that would remove Trump’s tariffs on Mexican steel — which doubled to 50% last week — “up to a certain volume.”
But as of early Thursday afternoon, no deal had been announced.
Asked whether Landau had asked for anything specific from Mexico, as was the case when Noem met with Sheinbaum in March, the president said he did not.
She subsequently denounced as “completely false” a Reuters report that stated that “the Trump administration is pressuring Mexico to investigate and prosecute politicians with suspected links to organized crime, and to extradite them to the United States if there are criminal charges to answer there.”
On Wednesday, Landau and Ambassador Johnson “didn’t ask for anything,” Sheinbaum said.
“It was a courtesy visit. And we [interacted with them] always with respect, but with firmness in the defense of Mexicans in the United States, and of what affects the people of Mexico at this time,” she said.
Sheinbaum reiterates that meeting with Trump next week is ‘very probable’
Three days after she confirmed that she would take up the invitation of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and attend next week’s G7 Summit in Alberta, Sheinbaum reiterated that a bilateral meeting with Trump was “very probable.”
On Tuesday, she said that security, migration and trade would be the top issues for discussion if she holds her first in-person, one-on-one meeting with the U.S. president.
She said Thursday that Foreign Minister de la Fuente and the head of the Foreign Ministry’s North America department Roberto Velasco would accompany her to Canada, and that other ministers may join the trip as well.
“We’re determining [who] according to the issues that will be dealt with,” Sheinbaum said.
By Mexico News Daily chief staff writer Peter Davies ([email protected])
