Most Americans agree with President Donald Trump’s idea to use the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to pressure Mexico to do more to stop illegal drugs and immigrants from entering the United States.
Trump had criticized Mexico earlier this week for not doing enough about stopping people from flowing through Mexico into the United States and threatened to “stop their cash cow, NAFTA.” The president called on Mexico to halt a caravan of more than 1,000 Central Americans traveling through the country with the goal of crossing into the United States and claiming asylum.
Sixty-two percent of likely American voters think that Mexico is not being aggressive enough at stopping the flow of aliens and drugs into the United States, Rasmussen found. Only 16 percent believe that Mexico is doing enough.
“Mexico has the absolute power not to let these large ‘Caravans’ of people enter their country,” Trump wrote on Twitter on April 2. “They must stop them at their Northern Border, which they can do because their border laws work, not allow them to pass through into our country, which has no effective border law.”
“Mexico is making a fortune on NAFTA, he added. ”They have very strong border laws - ours are pathetic. With all of the money they make from the U.S., hopefully they will stop people from coming through their country and into ours, at least until Congress changes our immigration laws!”
Trump shook up the renegotiation last month by imposing a tariff on imported steel and aluminum. Mexico and Canada were given a temporary exemption.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen did not give the size of the deployment, nor the duration, but said “it will be strong.”
“It will be as many as needed to fill the gaps today,” Nielsen said.
