International coalition calls for new U.S. policy strategy with Mexico

An international coalition, led by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, is calling on office holders and policy makers in Washington, D.C., to alter its policy with Mexico.

The newly formed Conservative U.S.-Mexico Policy Coalition argues “the old policy consensus that undergirded NAFTA, USMCA, and a generation of cooperative and friendly U.S.-Mexico relations has collapsed. The Mexican government is not an ally to the United States and can no longer properly be described as a partner.”

“The Mexican government and Mexican criminal cartels exist in conscious and willing symbiosis, at multiple levels, up to and including the Mexican presidency,” the group argues, which is devastating the lives of citizens of Mexico and the United States.

“The current president of Mexico has expressed his openness to a pact with the cartels and spoken of his willingness to defend them from American action,” the group argues. As a result, the Mexican government “is failing in its obligation to exercise full sovereignty over its own territory and citizenry,” and is “failing in its obligation to preserve its territory from use as a base of operations against its neighbors,” referring primarily to Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

In response to the ongoing border crisis, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas legislature have committed to protect the sovereignty of Texas. For the first time in Texas history, they designated Mexican cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Abbott is also expected to call a special legislative session for the legislature to pass other border security measures.

TPPF president Greg Sindelar last September argued that “until Mexico is a good neighbor, Texas must act” and declare an invasion. So far, the judges and commissioners of at least 46 counties have declared an invasion.

TPPF’s Chief of Intelligence and Research, Josh Treviño, told The Center Square the coalition’s call was important because “policy must be based in reality, and when it isn’t, policy fails. Nowhere have we failed to develop policy informed by reality more than in our relationship with Mexico. The Mexican state is not a partner, not an ally, and not a friend, yet Washington DC continues to pretend it is – and unnumbered Americans and Mexicans alike suffer for it.

“It is past time we understand Mexico as it is – and make policy accordingly. When we do that, we start to move toward the solutions both countries need – and build a future that is now out of reach.”

In addition to TPPF, the coalition includes The Heritage Foundation, Center for Renewing America, Fundación Patria Unida, Center for a Secure Free Society, and America First Policy Institute.

The group also argues that the Mexican government is “a willing partner in a regional authoritarian leftist alliance that is fundamentally anti-American, actively interventionist, and increasingly an arena and base for hostile powers from outside the Western Hemisphere.”

Mexico’s president is also “actively interfer[ing] in the domestic electoral process of the United States,” the coalition maintains.

Mexican President Manuel Lopez Obrador recently called on Americans to not vote for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis after Florida passed one of the strongest immigration reform and border security bills in the country. After the state’s E-verify law went into effect July 1, Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department said the Florida law “will affect the human rights of thousands of people, Mexican girls and boys, exacerbating hostile situations that could result in hate crimes against the migrant community.”

Florida has begun investigating human trafficking, including of children, from Mexico into the U.S. Violations of child labor laws, and allegations of human trafficking and sex trafficking of minors, including of unaccompanied minors released into the U.S. by the Biden administration, has resulted in several federal and state investigations.

On the same day the coalition made its announcement, Lopez Obrador also publicly called for “compatriots” in the U.S. to not vote for Abbott or members of the Texas legislature because of Operation Lone Star’s effectiveness in preventing illegal entry along the Rio Grande River.

Abbot is not up for reelection. He is currently serving the beginning of his third term, after he was resoundingly reelected in November.

Since Abbott launched OLS in March 2021, OLS officers working in Texas alone have apprehended more than 390,500 illegal foreign nationals, and made over 30,800 criminal arrests, with more than 28,700 felony charges reported. They’ve also seized over 421 million lethal doses of fentanyl pouring through the Texas-Mexico border, enough to kill more than everyone in the United States.