“The decline is over,” he said. Trump made the hyperbolic promises of retaking the Panama Canal and renaming the Gulf of Mexico. As expected, migration was the main focus.
One of the first objectives of Donald Trump’s second administration, according to him, is to address the issue of illegal immigration in the United States. The migratory flow from South and Central American countries to the United States is among the priorities of the new Republican government.
The countries of origin of migrant caravans crossing the southern US border include, above all, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, but also from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
Trump has accused the Biden government for years of allowing the indiscriminate passage of immigrants. Considering that this population has been the greatest force of the real economy in the United States, a sector of society that was, to a large extent, one of the engines that prevented the country from falling into recession in recent years, empirical data and economic analysis show that the measures of the previous Democratic administration had a good reason to normalize the immigration flow.
However, all of that is about to come to a standstill. In his inaugural address on Monday, January 20, as the 47th president of the United States, Trump announced that one of his first orders would be to declare a state of emergency on the southern border, send troops, and reinstate a policy that forces asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for a court date on US soil: the “Remain in Mexico” policy, put in place during his previous administration, is coming back into play.
Furthermore, the New York Post reports, “Trump plans to end several Biden administration immigration policies, including mass humanitarian parole, which gives special consideration to migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. The CBP One program, an app that allows migrants to register and apply for legal entry into the US from Mexico, will also be suspended.”
According to officials in the new White House, the Republican president has “plans to designate organized migrant gangs, including Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, as terrorist organizations” via executive order.
All of this would be an effort to establish a second, reloaded edition of “Maganomics,” which promotes a reduction in migration. In an article last November, the aforementioned economist Roberts cited a recent report from the American Immigration Council: “It finds that if the government deports a population of roughly 13 million people who in 2022 lacked permanent legal status and faced the possibility of removal, the cost would be enormous: about $305 billion.”
This would obviously be a policy that would have short-, medium-, and long-term impacts on the US economy and society.
These measures will undoubtedly contradict the “maximum pressure” strategy advocated and demanded by hawks and neoconservatives (such as Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz) against Venezuela. Rubio and Waltz will hold key foreign policy positions in the Trump government.
Americas Quarterly editor-in-chief Brian Winter warned of this contradiction in an article published on January 14 in which he collected the opinions of “some two dozen political and business figures from across the Americas” and stated that “no one knows to what extent Trump and his team will adopt an aggressive approach [with respect to Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua]. Some analysts believe that he will avoid returning to the ‘maximum pressure’ policies of his first term for fear of unleashing an even larger wave of migration.”
Indeed, part of Washington, at least in the legislative wing, has taken note of the White House’s previous experience regarding foreign policy with respect to our countries and is apparently well aware that the “maximum pressure” reloaded would come into direct conflict with the geopolitical and economic interests of Maganomics, despite the Axios report of January 18 that points, if one reads between the lines, to a return of that policy against Venezuela.
The report by the US Congressional Research Service, published on January 13, was explicit in concluding that the unilateral sanctions that resulted in a criminal economic, commercial, and financial blockade against Venezuela “contributed to secondary migration to the United States.”
“The Trump Administration sought to promote democracy and human rights in Venezuela by using a ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions strategy to try to force Maduro to cede power,” states the report. “The sanctions proved insufficient to achieve that goal and may have exacerbated an ongoing economic crisis that contributed to mass emigration, including to the United States.”
The conclusions drawn by Congress have also been endorsed by other institutions and researchers, of different ideological and political tendencies, based on empirical data on the relationship between sanctions and migration. The most relevant of these institutions are the following:
Democrats led by House lawmakers from border states are urging President Biden to end Trump-era sanctions against Cuba and Venezuela, which have battered those countries’ economies and contributed to a surge of migrants at the US southern border.
Thus, there are multiple sources that prove the direct effects of unilateral sanctions during the era of “maximum pressure” on Venezuelan migration.
Given the fact that Trump will take drastic measures regarding migration in the United States, a return to the foreign policy regarding Venezuela that was adopted during his first term does not seem convenient, much less bold. It would imply a strategic contradiction since the “scourge” that he is trying to remedy, on the one hand, would be encouraged and fueled, and on the other, since the direct correlation between illegal sanctions and migratory flow from Venezuela has been proven.
What will prevail in this first part of his nascent administration? The “common sense” he advocated during his inaugural address or the interests of the extremist wing of South Florida?
Everything remains to be seen, but the evidence on the subject is on the table.
“Maximum pressure” would be useless in achieving the migration objectives that have been set and prioritized as the most important for his new administration. This would also send a contradictory message to his voters: the failure to fulfill his promises and his involvement in wars and conflicts abroad, neglecting the “golden era” that he has promised to build.