(ConservativeSense.com) – A new book by Todd Bensman, a national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, details how Trump’s Ambassador to Mexico “hit the roof” following the Mexican government’s change in legislation passed at the end of Trump’s presidency blocking detention centers in Mexico from taking back migrant families with children.
The book, “Overrun: How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S. History,” revealed how when the law was passed in November 2020, a few days after President Biden’s election, it resulted in diplomatic controversy overshadowed by the transition of power and the Jan. 6th riot at the Capitol.
Christopher Landau, Trump’s ambassador to Mexico, was particularly appalled at the legislation. In an interview with Bensman, he said that he “really hit the roof,” specifically because no one told him it was on the agenda.
“I remember thinking this is really going to screw us on some of these issues,” Landau said, “especially if it’s implemented with any teeth.” He also said if he knew the change in Mexican policy was coming, he would’ve “been on this like a fly on honey.”
The law, which went into effect in January 2021 and was titled “Various Articles of the Migration Law and the Law on Refugees are Reformed, Complementary Protection and Political Asylum in the Matter of Migrant Children,” allowed Mexican states to refuse any migrant families sent back from the U.S. under a health order. This meant that after being freed from Mexican detention centers and crossing the border, the U.S. had to keep the migrant families and could not send them back.
2021 and 2022 saw record numbers of migrant encounters at the border. There’s also been a crisis of drug smuggling, specifically fentanyl, across the border, which Biden addressed during the last State of the Union to an angry response from Republicans blaming him for the crisis.
The Biden administration seems to be taking the hint. They announced this month a new rule to declare any migrants who crossed through another country without seeking asylum in that country before entering the U.S. illegally to be ineligible for asylum, which certainly angered some fellow Democrats and immigration activists.
Copyright 2023, ConservativeSense.com
