Ripping President Trump’s border wall as “monstrous,” a leading Mexican presidential candidate this week told a Washington audience that illegal immigrants are not criminals, and simply want “to go to museums.”
The description of Mexican immigrants by Margarita Zavala, a member of the National Action Party of Mexico and wife of former President Felipe Calderón, was matched by former Bush-era Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who said “by and large, they’re good people.”
Both hit the wall and portrayal by the president and his team of Latino immigrants, including those here illegally, as criminals, during a roundtable discussion at the Atlantic Council.
Zavala, through an interpreter, said, “There are many, many Latin American immigrants, they want to come here illegally, they want to walk around legally, they want to go to museums, but they don’t necessarily want to be citizens.”
Chertoff said he was distressed by the way the Trump team has referred to illegal immigrants.
He added, “It was really distressing to hear a suggestion that most or all migrants, even if they are coming across without authorization, are criminals. That’s completely wrong. If you look at the people who are coming across to work, by and large, what they’re doing, they’re coming to do hard work for generally low pay, so they can send money home to their families. And when they’re not working, they’re going to church. So I’m saying to myself, why do we not like this? These are the kind of people we want to have.”
The roundtable touched on security, trade and even energy policy. Zavala, a Mexican lawmaker who has been compared to former U.S. first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, faces a 2018 election.
As have most Mexican officials, she was very critical of Trump, his anti-illegal immigrant rhetoric, and the wall, which she vowed her country would not pay for. Worse, she warned, a wall is “going to lead to more violence.”
She also pleaded with Washington to tone down the “hatred” of migrants.
“We need to stop associating the word ‘migration’ with such negative concepts as drugs, organized crime and terrorism,” she said, adding, “We’re not going to solve the weighty issues of the day by hating others.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
