The hostility between the two countries comes as the Trump administration has vowed to carry out “mass deportations”. The president signed several executive orders related to immigration on his first day in office.
Some of Trump’s executive orders were signed to expand the ability of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to arrest and detain illegal immigrants in the US.
The press secretary of the White House, Carolyn Levitt, said that only on Thursday, 538 arrests were made.
By comparison, ICE detained more than 149,700 people in fiscal year 2024 under the Biden administration, an average of 409 per day.
Trump has declared a national emergency at the Mexican border, ordered officials to deny citizenship to children of migrants in the US illegally or on temporary visas, and has restated his “stay in Mexico” policy since his first term.
On Saturday, US Vice President JD Vance told CBS Face The Nation that he supports “law enforcement against violent criminals.”
“Just because we were founded by immigrants doesn’t mean that 240 years later we have to have the stupidest immigration policy in the world,” he told Margaret Brennan.
Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar,” told ABC News on Sunday that the military is currently at the U.S.-Mexico border, helping to fly in military aircraft and build infrastructure to secure the border.
“It sends a strong signal to the world: our border is closed,” he said.
Trump campaigned on securing the southern border and reducing the number of undocumented immigrants entering the US.
Additional reporting by Ione Wells
