Mexico launching app for migrants in US, vows to defend residents going through deportation

Mexico is creating an app that can permit migrants within the U.S. going through deportation to alert their members of the family and native U.S. consulates if they’re about to be detained by authorities, a senior official mentioned Friday. He added that his authorities plans to make sure that every Mexican citizen is given due course of within the U.S. earlier than being doubtlessly ejected from the nation. 

The app, known as “Alert Button,” is being designed in anticipation of the mass deportations of unlawful migrants anticipated to happen after President-elect Trump is sworn into workplace on Jan. 20. A cornerstone of Trump’s second time period in workplace is to safe the border and perform the most important mass deportation program the U.S. has ever seen.

Many Mexican nationals who’re within the U.S. illegally will probably be focused by the brand new Trump administration. The Mexican authorities estimates there are 11.5 million migrants with some type of authorized residency in the USA and 4.8 million with out authorized residency or correct paperwork. 

Migrants close to the Rio Grande alongside the US-Mexico border in Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico, on Dec. 18, 2024, left. A migrant checks his telephone, proper. (David Peinado/Bloomberg, left, Luis Boza/VIEWpress/Corbis through Getty Photographs, proper.)

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The brand new app, which is predicted to be out there in January, will permit customers to press a tab to ship an alert notification to beforehand chosen kin and the closest Mexican consulate, of which there are 53 within the U.S.

“In case you end up in a state of affairs the place detention is imminent, you push the alert button and that sends a sign to the closest consulate,” Mexico’s secretary of overseas affairs Juan Ramón de la Fuente mentioned.

He mentioned it has already been rolled out for small-scale testing and “seems to be working very properly.” 

De la Fuente described it as a kind of panic button, including that his workplace has beefed up its consular employees by hiring “329 authorized representatives” to make sure that Mexicans going through deportation will probably be given due course of and are correctly knowledgeable of their rights earlier than potential elimination. 

President-elect Trump has vowed to safe the border and perform the most important mass deportation program the U.S. has ever seen. (AP Photograph/Rick Scuteri)

U.S. authorities are obliged to inform home-country consulates when a overseas citizen is detained. Mexico says it has beefed up consular employees and authorized assist to assist migrants within the authorized course of associated to deportation. 

The federal government says it has additionally arrange a name middle staffed 24 hours a day to reply migrants’ questions and assist educate them on their rights forward of “doable arrests or different intimidating actions.”

De la Fuente, in an announcement, mentioned that the Mexican authorities will defend the human rights of its residents within the U.S. in strict compliance with worldwide regulation.

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“We need to inform our fellow countrymen that they aren’t alone and they won’t be alone,” he mentioned, reiterating that there’s a consular community that’s as much as the duty.

The overseas minister mentioned that with a purpose to deport somebody from the U.S. a courtroom order or elimination ruling is required and that his consular workforce will probably be “very vigilant in making certain that due course of is adopted.”

Trump has already clashed with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum over immigration and proposed 25% tariff on imported items from Mexico over the circulate of unlawful immigrants and illicit medicine. Sheinbaum mentioned that such a transfer might result in a commerce struggle between the international locations and insisted her authorities has already been clamping down on migrants crossing into the U.S.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum addresses supporters in Mexico Metropolis on Oct. 1. She has clashed with President-elect Trump on immigration. (AP/Fernando Llano)

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The U.S. recorded an unprecedented variety of unlawful migrants flowing throughout its borders beneath the Biden-Harris administration. The variety of unlawful immigrants on ICE’s non-detained docket exploded to almost 7.7 million, greater than double what it was when Trump left workplace. It was at 3.2 million on the finish of FY 2020.

The annual ICE report launched in October exhibits that ICE deported 271,484 unlawful immigrants to 192 totally different international locations in fiscal yr 2024. Of these, 32.7% had felony histories and 237 have been identified or suspected terrorists.

It’s a major enhance from greater than 142,000 deported in FY 23, and round 72,000 in FY 2022. In FY 2020, the final yr of the Trump administration and which coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been round 185,000 deportations and in FY 2019 there have been 267,000 deportations. 

Fox Information’ Adam Shaw and the Related Press contributed to this report.