During Friday remarks at Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, Mexico Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray said that if DACA recipients of Mexican descent were to return to Mexico, it would be a “big win” (“enorme ganancia”) for his country. (Our translation of his comments in Spanish.)
According to the official State Department transcript, here is the crux of what Videgaray said in Spanish (although the official transcript did not translate “enorme ganancia:”
We didn’t talk about the DACA agreement. We have talked about it before, but in the migration situation, it is a matter of the United States to agree on this, and it’s the same thing in Mexico and Canada. And in the case of the DACA, of course we have shared information with members of the American Congress and—congressmen of the United States, but if the DACA people are coming back, it would be a win situation for Mexico and a lose situation for the United States. It would be one of the most important losses in humanity, because this is a situation of people who came as children and they have a clean record, most of them, and are engineers. They work in programming, they are doctors, lawyers, and of course, Mexico would be having an important win situation and lose situation for the United States. But finally, that is the decision from the United States and we are going to try to find a situation in the Congress for the future of these young people. But at the end, it’s what they decide.
I’ve talked to most of them, and most of them want to stay in the United States. Most of them want to stay there and some of them want to come back to Mexico, but it—this is not a matter of the bilateral situation.
In addition, Videgaray added this:
We also talked widely about this situation in this meeting, and Mr. Rex Tillerson was talking about it in—a few moments ago about the combat of the criminal groups is one of our priorities. And we want these efforts to have a more strategic planning so that we can dismantle the plans of these organizations.
We mentioned it last year and we hope that we can have measurable results. One of the topics that we’re going to mention in the dismantling of these criminal groups is going to be weapons. Of course, the illegal weapons that come from the United States to Mexico is something that should be dismantled. And we have an agreement of what the paradigm is. This paradigm should be cooperation. We should not take the guilt into someone else. The criminal groups that – and the illegal weapons from the United States, Mexico, and the cash that comes is to be able to dismantle the production and the creation of these groups. If we don’t have a joint effort, we are giving a strategic opportunity to these criminal groups, and we’re not going to be able to dismantle them.
