Will Mexican President-Elect Sheinbaum Get Tough on Illegal Immigration and Crime?

While President-elect Sheinbaum celebrates and President Biden applauds her victory, Mexico’s ruling Morena party is the same, but its boss is new. Will Ms. Sheinbaum change course on illegal immigration and cartel narcotrafficking, or will she serve in President López-Obrador’s shadow is the question on many analysts’ minds following the weekend’s election.Ms. Sheinbaum “will be her own persona,” the director of the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, Rafael Fernández, tells the Sun. She will not be “the puppet of López-Obrador.” The current president will “disappear from the political scene,” according to Mr. Fernández, who served as foreign policy adviser to the 63rd President of Mexico, Felipe Calderón.Yet, even as AMLO, as Mr. López-Obrador is known, claims he will “talk with the trees, live with the birds,” he also announced that the Treasury Secretary Rogelio Ramírez will continue in his post through Ms. Sheinbaum’s administration. The Morena party’s landslide victory, however, “cuts both ways,” Mr. Fernández says. While it makes Ms. Sheinbaum stronger, he adds, “the mandate is clear — they want more of AMLO.”“Sheinbaum’s huge margin of victory will be taken as validation of President López-Obrador’s policies,” an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute, Dan Batlle, tells the Sun. “The electorate did not respond favorably to the opposition’s attempts to center the campaign on insecurity and democracy,” Mr. Batlle says.For America, the most burning question is whether any of that would change Mexico’s approach to the border crisis. Ms. Sheinbaum will not “change the status quo for Mexico as a pass-through of non-Mexicans coming to the U.S. border unless” there is a “political price” or “external economic cost,” a former acting director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, David Shedd, tells the Sun.If Mexico becomes a destination, rather than a transit country, for immigrants, Ms. Sheinbaum will “choose to cooperate on immigration,” the director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center, Lila Abed, tells the Sun from Mexico City. Regardless, she says “the root causes” of Latin American immigration must be factored in, such as violence, poverty, and environmental degradation.Though some experts express hope for a more pragmatic leader, Mr. Shedd says, “Sheinbaum is more ideologically driven than López-Obrador,” and will not align with America “on interests concerning Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.” Mr. Shedd says this should raise serious concern for the national security community.This means that Ms. Sheinbaum will be unlikely to crack down on illegal immigration. Instead, her presidency will bring, according to Mr. Batlle, “continued centralization of power, erosion of democratic institutions.”On the issue of crime, Mr. Fernández says Ms. Sheinbaum “has to get tougher on it” than Mr. López-Obrador, calling him a “true politico.” Mr. López-Obrador has refused to confront the drug cartels, embracing a failed policy of “hugs, not bullets.” The president-elect may be better at dealing with organized crime given her record as a “policy wonk who reads the numbers, understands the statistics,” Mr. Fernández says. “Sheinbaum reportedly cut the violent crime rates in Mexico City during her tenure as mayor by 50 percent,” Mr. Shedd says. That means she placed a high priority on fighting crime, he says, adding she will rebuild a “civilian-led counter-crime capability” and “anti-crime intelligence capability.”“Sheinbaum will have a fairly different strategy than López Obrador with the cartels,” Ms. Abed, who made note of her effective security strategy as mayor says. Ms. Abed mentions Ms. Sheinbaum’s desire to “create a national intelligence agency to improve coordination and communication,” but raises alarm bells at her goal of “consolidating the national guard under the Ministry of Defense.”Ms. Abed points out another concern: the Morena party and friends governing as a supermajority in Congress. The current president will have the month of September — between the start of a new Congress and an executive seat change — to fast track judicial reforms and consolidate Morena’s power. “None of what we just talked about will work if Mexico deteriorates in terms of democracy,” Ms. Abed says. “Mexico is reverting back to single-party, hegemonic rule.”

Will Mexican President-Elect Sheinbaum Get Tough on Illegal Immigration and Crime?

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