Trump Signs Anemic New Immigration Deal With Mexico

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The Trump administration has concluded an immigration agreement with Mexico that ends Trump’s threats to levy tariffs on all Mexican goods entering the United States. There are two provisions:

Unless I’m missing something, there’s not much here. The first point is something that Mexico says it’s already been doing for months. American officials initially dismissed it as little more than hot air, but now it’s the heart of the agreement. What changed?

As for the Migrant Protection Protocols, which allow border authorities to return asylum seekers to Mexico while they await a court hearing, they were implemented last December in San Diego, with plans to roll them out across the border over time. So is there anything new here, aside from the fact that Mexico is accepting the program formally, rather than pretending to oppose it while quietly cooperating? I can’t tell. It’s possible that “entire Southern Border” literally means the entire border, not just ports of entry, which I think would be new. But that’s not clear. In any case, this is an American program that Mexico has already tacitly accepted, not anything new that Mexico is doing to rein in the flood of asylum seekers from Guatemala and other countries.

In brief, then: Mexico has agreed to (a) maintain some vaguely defined law enforcement actions and (b) formally accept an American program that they were already cooperating with quietly. That’s it. But it was enough to buy off Trump. He’s a cheap date, I guess.

But Trump doesn’t really care about results anyway. He’ll take to Twitter and describe this agreement as the strongest immigration program ever implemented in history, and the Fox News megaphone will eagerly spread that message to his fans. He only cares that people think he’s the toughest president ever, and I suppose this gets the job done.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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