Mexico's President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum on immigration: 'violence against migrants is unacceptable'

Claudia Sheinbaum made history this week by becoming Mexico's first female president. As the politician is set to replace fellow Morena party member and current president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, she will also inherit a complex immigration crisis, and one that she will likely have to work with the U.S. with to try to fix.

Many experts and voters see Sheinbaum as someone who will follow AMLO's ideas and policies, but throughout the campaign, she already expressed some of her ideas and plans into some of the issues that will most likely plague her presidency, namely the border and immigration.

Sheinbaum believes that to slow the influx of migrants passing through the border to reach the U.S. there must be some investment in the countries people are leaving, Straight Arrow News reports.

To do so, the president-elect has previously suggested the U.S. could use some of its military funds to help these countries and allegedly reduce illegal immigration.

"So, to the extent that there is development in Central America and in other countries that unfortunately many people leave for economic reasons to the United States, the long-term vision is that there should be investment and support in those areas," she said last month.

"So, if a part of what is destined to war investment in the U.S. were destined to investment for peace, we would be talking about a natural decrease in migration," she continued.

This is an issue the Morena politician has discussed throughout her campaign. During a rally in Ciudad Juarez in early March, the then-candidate explained that this plan would be less expensive to the U.S. compared to building a wall or increasing border patrol.

Similarly, in her campaign platform, she argued that immigration issues are related to human rights, which she vowed to defend.

"We fight to defend the human rights of Mexicans around the world, particularly those who live and work in the United States. The climate of intolerance and violence against migrants is unacceptable," Morena's party platform reads. "We fight for equality, for diversity, to enforce the rights of everyone in the face of social, labor and political discrimination."

The president-elect will assume office on October 1, almost a month before the U.S. is set to also go into a hotly contested race. When it comes to her American counterpart, she believes that either candidate can benefit Mexico.

"I think it will be good, whether President Biden or President Trump wins," she said. "We have very strong economic integration with the United States. We are now the principal trading partner and that requires us to have a good relationship."

Mexican-U.S. relationship greatly suffered under AMLO, who has been in power since 2018. That was until the migrant crisis came back into the forefront in the last couple of years, which led to presidents from both countries agreeing to work together to tackle the trend.

Since that agreement, the number of migrants crossing the border has declined in recent months, as Mexico won't allow more than 4,000 illegal crossings a day to the U.S., down from more than 10,000 Border Patrol arrests on some days in December.