Late on Friday, June 7, 2019, the United States and Mexico announced that they reached an agreement which will require Mexico to take steps to address the issue of illegal immigration at the US.-Mexico border. In a joint statement issued late Friday, the two countries explained that Mexico would take “unprecedented” enforcement steps to “curb irregular migration” at the border, including the deployment of Mexico’s national guard to stop migrants from reaching the United States. According to the joint statement, Mexico also agreed to require some migrants to wait in Mexico while their asylum claims are pending before U.S. immigration authorities. If Mexico’s actions “do not have the expected results,” however, the United States may take additional measures to address the illegal immigration issue. The two countries continue to discuss these issues.

The announcement resolved the issues created by the most recent steps taken by President Trump to force Mexico to address his concerns about illegal immigration. On May 30, 2019, the President announced that he intended to impose tariffs of five percent “on all goods imported from Mexico,” and that he would increase these tariffs by 5 percentage points each month up to a maximum of 25 percent in October 2019, unless and until Mexico substantially stopped the flow of immigrants to the United States’ southern border. He added that, if no agreement was reached between Mexico and the United States, the additional tariffs could be imposed on June 10, 2019.

On June 3, 2019, Mexican Secretary of Economy Ildefonso Guajardo Villarreal responded to this threat by stating that Mexico would use tariffs or other retaliatory measures to respond to any tariffs imposed by the United States. At the time, reports indicated that the retaliatory tariffs would focus on Republican-leaning agricultural states, but would exclude corn, which is one of Mexico’s biggest imports from the United States.

Members of Congress expressed strong opposition to the threatened tariffs. In fact, a group of Republican lawmakers publicly stated that they would try to block the President’s action against Mexico. Although Congress earlier this year unsuccessfully tried to block President Trump’s use of emergency funds for a border wall with Mexico, Republican lawmakers indicated that they had the votes to block the President’s action, including the votes to override any veto of Congressional action by the President.

On June 5, 2019, in an effort to avoid the imposition of tariffs and resolve the crisis created by the President’s announcement, Mexican Foreign Minister Ebrard met with Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and U.S. Trade Representative (“USTR”) Robert Lighthizer to discuss the issue. As a result of these discussions, the two countries announced the agreement between the two countries, under which Mexico has agreed to begin taking action to reduce the flow of immigrants into the United States.