Trump says US, Mexico reach agreement to prevent tariffs

President Donald Trump announced late Friday that he had suspended plans to impose tariffs on Mexico, tweeting that the country "has agreed to take strong measures" to stem the flow of Central American migrants into the United States.

A "US-Mexico Joint Declaration" released by the State Department outlined the details of the deal, saying the US "will immediately expand the implementation" of a program that returns asylum-seekers who cross the southern border to Mexico while their claims are adjudicated. Mexico will "offer jobs, healthcare and education" to those people, "according to its principles," the agreement stated.

Mexico has also agreed, it said, to take "unprecedented steps to increase enforcement to curb irregular migration," including the deployment of the Mexican National Guard throughout the country, especially on its southern border with Guatemala.

And Mexico is taking "decisive action to dismantle human smuggling and trafficking organizations as well as their illicit financial and transportation networks," the State Department said.

The US announced in December that it would make some asylum seekers wait in Mexico while their cases were being proceeded a begrudging agreement with Mexico that has taken months to scale and that has been plagued with glitches, including wrong court dates, travel problems and issues with lawyers reaching their clients.

Homeland Security officials have been ramping up slowly, and were already working to spread the program along the border before the latest blowup.

About 10,000 people have been returned to Mexico to wait out the processing of their immigration cases since the program began January 29. More than 100,000 migrants are currently crossing the US border each month, but not everyone claims asylum and migrants can wait an entire year before making a claim.

Any sizable increase may also be difficult to achieve. At the San Ysidro crossing alone, Mexico had been prepared to accept up to 120 asylum seekers per week, but for the first six weeks only 40 people per week were returned.

Trump's had announced the tariff plan last week, declaring in a tweet that, on June 10, the US would "impose a 5% Tariff on all goods coming into our Country from Mexico, until such time as illegal migrants coming through Mexico, and into our Country, STOP."
After returning from Europe Friday, though, Trump tweeted, "I am pleased to inform you that The United States of America has reached a signed agreement with Mexico."
He wrote that the "Tariffs scheduled to be implemented by the US on Monday, against Mexico, are hereby indefinitely suspended."
He said Mexico has agreed to work to "stem the tide of Migration through Mexico, and to our Southern Border" and said those steps would "greatly reduce, or eliminate, Illegal Immigration coming from Mexico and into the United States."
Leaving the State Department Friday night, Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said he thought the deal struck "a fair balance" because the US "had more drastic proposals and measures at the start."