Mexico promised earlier this month to send 6,500 National Guard agents to its southern border, but Monday's announcement was the first public acknowledgment of deployments to the U.S. border.
At a news conference in the Caribbean city of Cancun, Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval said Mexican forces were detaining migrants to prevent them from crossing the U.S. border. Mexican security forces previously have detained migrants traveling within Mexico but had not stopped them from crossing into the United States.
6,000 Mexican troops have been deployed to choke points on the border with Guatemala to thin out the number of migrants trying to reach the U.S.; William La Jeunesse reports from the scene.
"Given that migration is not a crime but rather an administrative violation, we simply detain them and turn them over to the [Mexican immigration] authorities," said Sandoval, as the AFP news agency reported.
Comment: Nice that the NYT decided to come clean about its relationship to the intelligence community. But the proof was there all along.
As the quote attributed to George Orwell goes: or propaganda . . . .