Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador claimed that the plan to close the border between the United States and Mexico with a wall, demanded by Republican candidate Donald Trump, was illusory in an interview broadcast on Sunday.
Interviewed on the program 60 minutes On CBS, when asked if Donald Trump, if elected president of the United States in November, would build the promised wall, the Mexican president responded: “no.”
“It’s not working!” he added, calling instead for reform of US foreign policy to discourage illegal immigration.
When Donald Trump was in office and intended to build a wall, the Mexican president said he explained to him that smugglers had managed to dig tunnels under the barriers already in place. The American president “was silent, then he laughed and said to me, ‘I can’t win with you,'” he continued.
Joe Biden must face Donald Trump again in the November presidential election, in a new version of the 2020 election, with illegal immigration once again at the center of the campaign.
Call for deep reforms
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, 70, said that at Joe Biden’s request, he helped ensure a temporary drop earlier this year in the number of illegal immigrants trying to enter the United States.
This drop was achieved thanks to Mexico being “more attentive” to its own southern border and the help of Central American leaders, he noted.
“However, this is a short-term solution and not a long-term one,” he said, adding that Mexico wants “the root causes” of illegal immigration to be addressed.
For the Mexican president, Washington should dedicate billions of dollars each year to reducing poverty in Latin America, easing sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba and granting legal status to millions of Mexicans living in the United States. Without these radical reforms, “the flow of immigrants… will continue,” he warned.
Source: BFM TV
