In his most recent column for The New York Times, Univision senior anchor Jorge Ramos laments that Mexican President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador (also known as AMLO) has turned Mexico “into an extension of Mr. Trump’s immigration police beyond American territory.”
In Ramos’ worldview, everything was perfectly fine with millions of migrants crossing and causing chaos in Mexico to illegally enter into the United States, mostly through coyotes and human trafficking - until Trump came along.
This is how he opened the rant, titled “Trump Got His Wish. Mexico Is Now the Wall”, which is also published in Spanish on his own jorgeramos.com, as well as on Univision.com:
“The American immigration system needs a complete makeover, but Lopez Obrador’s government shouldn’t act as an extension of the Border Patrol.”
Nothing more than another take at Ramos´ advocacy for open borders and bashing both Trump and AMLO, as MRC Latino has documented in the past.
In Ramos’ opinion, “Mexico has effectively turned into an extension of Mr. Trump’s immigration police beyond American territory. And this is the case on multiple fronts: On the southern border with Guatemala, they prevent Central American migrants from coming into Mexico; on the northern one, they block those seeking entry to the United States from leaving. The decision of Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador… to follow this approach is misguided. He should let migrants continue their journey north.”
As Ramos notes in the opinion piece, since the summer of 2019, over 56,000 people "had been sent back to Mexico to wait for the outcome of their applications," a fair amount of potential Univision viewers. Reasonable minds would infer that to Ramos, keeping an open border is more important than protecting “American workers and families from every walk of life,” to quote President Trump’s words on his Administration's agenda to secure our border from uncontrolled migration, dangerous criminals, and lethal drugs.
Mr. Ramos´s contempt for Lopez Obrador stems from the fact that the Mexican president is enforcing migration control and sustaining amiable relations with the Trump Administration.
“Mr. López Obrador has said that he favors a “peace and love” policy toward the United States and will avoid confrontation with Mr. Trump. There’s nothing wrong with wanting a good relationship with a powerful neighbor who also happens to be your main trade partner. But we should also remember that Mexico has been exporting immigrants to the United States for decades. Millions of us live on American soil.”
To which it can only be added that yes, millions of immigrants that live LEGALLY on American soil.
Ramos´ closing paragraph, however, makes it clear that the object is to let the migrants enter, and then deal with repercussions later- that the Trump administration, not the Lopez Obrador administration, should be receiving them and deciding whether they should be granted political asylum.”
Efforts to protect our border- such as the wall, Safe Third Country Agreements and Migrant Protection Protocols are obstacles to the end goal- preserving a broken system of unchecked immigration.
