MEXICO CITY _ Hoping to win support for the Trump administration's fight against illegal immigration, a team of senior U.S. officials traveled to Mexico on Friday to meet its next president and try to repair strained relations.
Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo is scheduled to pay calls on Mexico's president-elect, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a left-leaning populist who won the July 1 vote in a landslide. He also will meet outgoing President Enrique Pena Nieto, who has seen his popularity plummet in recent months in part for his failure to challenge President Donald Trump more forcefully.
Pompeo was joined by Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen M. Nielsen, Secretary of Treasury Steven T. Mnuchin and Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser. The delegation also included Carl Risch, head of consular affairs at the State Department, a further sign of the priority on immigration.
The daylong trip, which Pompeo undertook hours after returning to Washington from the NATO summit in Brussels and before he heads to Helsinki for Trump's meeting Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, comes after months of rancor between Trump and Mexico.
Trump has referred to Mexicans as criminals, demanded Mexico pay for a border wall it doesn't want and insulted Pena Nieto. The Mexican president canceled a planned trip to Washington in February after he and Trump tangled on the phone.
So far, Trump has been kinder to Lopez Obrador, including what both governments labeled a positive and cordial half-hour phone call after his election. Trump has pledged to work with the incoming Mexican leader after he takes office on Dec. 1.
Pena Nieto was not eligible to run because the Mexican constitution prohibits re-election. The presidential candidate for his Institutional Revolutionary Party came in a distant third.
For all the initial rapprochement, Trump and Lopez Obrador almost certainly will clash on both substance and style.
"It's a good start, but there are still a lot of issues that will be areas (of disagreement)," said Roberta Jacobson, who until May served as U.S. ambassador to Mexico. Trump "needs to stop vilifying Mexicans and blaming them for so many of the United States' problems."
Despite Trump's claims, the Pena Nieto government has taken numerous steps to stem illegal immigration. Funded in part by the United States, Mexico has reinforced its southern border with Guatemala and deported nearly 150,000 Central Americans in the last year. But those policies are increasingly unpopular.
The Trump administration also has sought to persuade Mexico to accept the status of "safe third nation," which would make it easier for Mexico to accept asylum applicants fleeing violence or persecution at home _ and stop them from continuing north to the United States to seek refuge.
Mexico has long resisted the proposal. Although Mexico has accepted significantly more asylum applicants, it is reluctant to shoulder a burden likely to be many times greater. And human rights advocates oppose the plan because Mexico is hardly a safe country for immigrants and the vulnerable, who often are preyed on by human-trafficking networks and murderous drug gangs.
Whether Lopez Obrador will continue to pursue the U.S.-financed immigration policies is yet unknown. Many of his supporters see Mexico's reinforcement of its borders as doing the United States' dirty work.
Lopez Obrador has spoken frequently about tackling the root causes of poverty and insecurity that drive people northward in the first place, but he has yet to detail a plan for accomplishing those goals.
Another area of divergence will be foreign policy, where the Trump administration likely will lose a key partner.
Washington has relied on Mexico to take the lead in efforts to isolate Venezuela and urge its embattled socialist government to step down, in part to minimize an appearance of U.S. intervention in a region where American meddling is a sensitive issue.
Lopez Obrador, however, has pledged to return to Mexico's tradition of keeping a low profile in international affairs.
