U.S. and Mexican officials working on closing border to ‘non-essential’ travel
U.S. and Mexican officials are working on an agreement to ban “non-essential” travel between their border along the same lines of the deal that the U.S. announced this week with Canada, a Trump administration official said. Trade would be exempted.
There are 118 coronavirus cases currently in Mexico and 13,159 in the U.S, according to Johns Hopkins data.
For tourists, Mexico is the seventh most-visited country around the world, according to Mexico tourism data, and 26 million U.S. travelers visited Mexico from January to August 2019, according to the U.S. National Travel and Tourism Office.
The Mexico-U.S. border has been a prominent and often contentious issue during President Trump’s tenure in the Oval Office. During his campaign ahead of the 2016 election, the “build the wall” movement, an effort to build a wall along the border to keep Mexican immigrants from entering the U.S., gained traction among his support base but stoked criticism among his detractors.
Trump said Wednesday there were no plans to shut down the southern border, but he signaled that other restrictions on migrants and asylum seekers could come any time.
Thousands of asylum seekers crammed in border towns near the Texas-Mexico border awaiting U.S. immigration hearings are at risk of dying from coronavirus because of poor health access and unsafe conditions, advocates say.
As the world works to slow the spread of coronavirus, countries have imposed a variety of travel restrictions, which range from suspending international flights and banning travelers from impacted countries, to requiring citizens or foreign nationals to self-quarantine for 14 days upon arrival.
Contributing: David Jackson, Nicquel Terry Ellis and Rick Jervis, USA TODAY; Rafael Carranza, Arizona Republic
Heads up:Coronavirus: What the new US-Canada nonessential travel restriction means for travelers
