1 week ago
11
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
The plan, called “Mexico Embraces You,” seeks to reassure undocumented migrants facing expulsion. Some experts question if the government is really ready to reabsorb them.
Jan. 23, 2025, 5:01 a.m. ET
Mexico’s plan to receive thousands of its deported citizens from the United States is nothing short of ambitious. Plans are underway to build nine reception centers along the border — massive tents set up in parking lots, stadiums and warehouses — with mobile kitchens operated by the armed forces.
Details of the initiative — called “Mexico Embraces You” — were revealed only this week, although Mexican officials said they had been devising it for the past few months, ever since Donald J. Trump pledged to conduct the largest expulsion of undocumented immigrants in U.S. history.
Nearly every branch of government — 34 federal agencies and 16 state governments — is expected to participate in one way or another: busing people to their hometowns, organizing logistics, providing medical attention, enrolling the recently returned in social welfare programs like pensions and paid apprenticeships, along with handing out cash cards worth about $100 each.
Officials say they are also negotiating agreements with Mexican companies to link people to jobs.
“We are ready to receive you on this side of the border,” Mexico’s interior minister, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, said at a news conference this week. “Repatriation is an opportunity to return home and be reunited with family.”
President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico has called the expected large-scale deportations a “unilateral move” and has said she does not agree with them. But as the country with the single largest number of unauthorized citizens living in the United States — an estimated four million people as of 2022 — Mexico has found itself obligated to prepare.
The government’s plan is focused on Mexicans deported from the United States, though the president has indicated the country could temporarily receive foreign deportees, too.
