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Mexico will reject the remaining funds of the Merida Plan if they’re used by the U.S. to coerce the country on immigration policy, said Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong on Friday.
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The US$2.6 billion security assistance package on the drug war has been almost been entirely distributed since 2008, mostly on military equipment like helicopters and training for its security forces.
The plan has been widely criticized for worsening, rather than improving, violence and disappearances in the country and being partly responsible for the disappearance of the 43 student-teachers in Ayotzinapa. It already contains a proviso to withhold funds if Mexico doesn’t improve its rule of law or human rights abuses, though the U.S. has never enacted this demand.
Besides now taking into account U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to build a border wall, the aid may be dependent on Mexico hosting undocumented immigrants from third countries as they are awaiting processing of their deportation trials in the U.S.
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"They can't leave them here on the border because we have to reject them. There is no chance they would be received by Mexico," said Osorio Chong on Friday, speaking with Radio Formula after a cool reception of U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, who visited on Thursday.
Mexico already deports hundreds of thousands of Central Americans apprehended at its southern border, but cities like Mexico City are among the largest receptors of refugees deported from the U.S.
Trump ordered a review of financial assistance to Mexico in a Jan. 25 executive order on immigration security that mandated the construction of a border wall, leading to speculation that Trump wants to redirect the aid to pay for its construction.
"When they realize what's left of Merida, they will understand that it's not even that significant," Osorio Chong told the local radio.
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"We don't object to them moving these resources... Mexico now has its own capabilities," he said.
Trump's insistence that Mexico will pay for a border wall led to the cancellation of a summit with President Enrique Peña Nieto, and the two sides have since agreed not to speak publicly about the issue to avoid further souring the relationship.
Osorio Chong and Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray were blunt about Mexico's anger over Trump's immigration and trade proposals in public statements during the visit by Tillerson and Kelly, who tried to calm tensions.
An internal U.S. Department of Homeland Security report showed that Trump's wall could cost as much as US$21.6 billion, Reuters reported earlier in February.
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