Trump presses Mexico's Sheinbaum to stop migrants at US border

Eric Martin, Bloomberg News on Aug 27, 2026

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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration is pushing Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to do more to stop undocumented migrants from crossing the U.S. border after apprehensions reached the highest level of his second term.

Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio delivered the message during a private meeting with Mexican Foreign Minister Roberto Velasco in Washington on Wednesday, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified without permission to speak publicly.

The push is led by Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller, a top Trump adviser, and the main U.S. demand is that Mexico stop its own citizens from crossing the border, the people said. That presents a constitutional and legal complication for Sheinbaum’s government because Mexican nationals are free to travel within their own country, including from the poorer southern states where many migrants originate to northern Mexico and the U.S. border region.

Immigration was one of several issues, including stopping drug trafficking and cartel activity, where Rubio called for “decisive action,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said in a statement following the meeting.

“Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, we have the most secure border in history,” said Lauren Bis, a White House spokeswoman. “For 15 months, zero illegals have been released into the United States. As the President has said, it is also true that vicious cartels control vast swaths of territory in Mexico and present a danger to the safety and security of the United States.”

Mexico’s foreign ministry didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The renewed pressures comes as apprehensions along the 2,000-mile frontier between the U.S. and Mexico have risen to the highest levels since Trump returned to office in January 2025.

More than 9,200 migrants were apprehended by Border Patrol in July, double the number from a year earlier. The numbers ticked up from previous months, an unusual pattern given that crossings typically decline in summer as hot weather makes for harsh conditions.”

Even so, the level remains a fraction of those seen under former President Joe Biden when at times tens of thousands of migrants each month traveled to the U.S. from across South and Central America via Mexico. July apprehensions were only a sixth the level during the same month in Biden’s final year, by which point crossings had already begun falling from their peaks.

The 238,000 migrants apprehended in the previous fiscal year — which still included the final months under Biden — was the lowest in 55 years, and the Migration Policy Institute, an immigration-focused think tank, attributed the tumble to Trump’s crackdown that largely closed the southern border to asylum seekers.

(Alex Vasquez and Alicia A. Caldwell contributed to this report.)