Trump Forced Mexico’s Hand On Immigration — The Reforms Are Already Working

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Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico –

Tijuana, nestled on the border between Mexico and California, regularly ranks among the most dangerous cities in the world.

It had the sixth highest murder rate of any city on the globe in 2024, with over 91 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, according to Statista.

The U.S. State Department has issued travel advisories for Mexico’s state of Baja California as recently as September 2024, warning “travelers should remain on main highways and avoid remote locations.”

“Transnational criminal organizations compete in the border area to establish narco-trafficking and human smuggling routes,” the advisory cautioned, adding that “violent crime and gang activity are common.”

However, the city looks very different in Feb. 2025 than it did in January.

The change is, at least in part, thanks to Operación Frontera Norte, or Operation Northern Border. The sweeping operation is a result of an edict from recently elected Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who ordered 10,000 Mexican National Guard troops to the border at the behest of President Donald Trump.

Trump threatened to impose 25 percent tariffs on Mexico if Sheinbaum did not take action to stop the flow of fentanyl and migrants into the U.S. The U.S. is Mexico’s largest trading partner, with exports to the U.S. accounting for about 30% of Mexico’s annual GDP.

Citizens noticed the impacts of Operación Frontera Norte immediately. At numerous ports of entry, including a well-traveled point between Tijuana and San Diego, Mexican officials are now searching vehicles before they make it to American authorities on the border.

One Mexican citizen who commutes to his job in California at Amazon every day said the upgraded scrutiny has added an hour to his commute.

These searches by the Mexican National Guard are the first time in over three decades that Mexico is conducting vehicle searches before cars get to the border, Director of the Mexican National Guard in Baja California General Hector Jimenez Baez, told the Daily Caller.

The changes were evident not just at official border checkpoints, but in numerous places on the border that don’t have a port of entry or a physical wall. One such place was high up in the Nido de las Aguilas mountain range.

An unwalled section of the border in the mountain range is roughly a 45 minute drive up steep and rocky terrain from downtown Tijuana. Smugglers would often make the trek through a densely populated and compact series of villages and open-air markets to ferry migrants across the open gap in the wall.

Around 120 people crossed through that previously unmanned border section per day, though U.S. Customs and Border Patrol apprehended the majority of them on the other side, the Mexican National Guard told the Caller. Now, following Operation Northern Border, the Mexican National Guard is operating the location 24/7. Nobody has attempted a crossing since the operation kicked off on Feb. 5, the Mexican National Guard told the Caller.

Another area where crossings were previously popular was a section of the border nestled against the Lakeside Sportsman Club, a California shooting range. A small portion of the crossing zone was covered by a metal sheet and barbed wire, but there are numerous open areas of the border where migrants can easily cross into California and walk just ten minutes to a nearby freeway, the National Guard told the Caller.

Groups as large as 100 at a time crossed at the junction. The area was littered with discarded clothes and shoes — high heels and sneakers — which smugglers encourage migrants to discard so they’re harder to spot. Smugglers frequently tell female migrants to wear high heels during the trek to the southern border, the Guard told the Caller, to prevent them from running away from the smugglers, who often sexually abuse them.

The Mexican National Guard is posted at the deep desert crossing 24/7 and, just like the Nido de las Aguilas mountain range location, nobody has attempted a crossing there since Feb. 4.

Paramount to the continued success of the operation — which may be in question as Trump’s pause on implementing the Mexico tariffs expired Tuesday — is ongoing cooperation between Mexican authorities and American officials, General Baez told the Caller.

An underreported element of that cooperation, Baez said, is the flow of American weapons into Mexico.

Since October, Mexican authorities have seized 6,582 illegal weapons and over a million cartridges, 70 percent of which came from the U.S., General Baez told the Caller. The weapons, Baez said, are a major source of power for the country’s cartels, who are largely responsible for the cross-border drug trade.

“If they don’t have weapons, they cannot kill people, and the homicides will decrease, and we won’t have an insecurity situation,” Baez told the Caller.

Whether or not the cooperation continues is now up in the air. Sheinbaum is likely to announce a series of retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. in response to Trump’s, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

But the numbers show that the reforms that stemmed from the increased cooperation are already working. Trump announced a record-low 8,236 border apprehensions by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol in February.

“We share values, we share families, we share jobs,” General Baez said of American and Mexican cooperation.

“We have problems, of course we have problems,” he continued, “but it will be solved with cooperation and communication to make a stronger relationship between the countries. In every single camp — military, police and commercial ,” the general concluded.

AUTHOR

Robert McGreevy

Reorter.

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Trump Forced Mexico’s Hand On Immigration — The Reforms Are Already Working

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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