Agreement reached, no tariffs on Mexico, president says

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump announced tonight he had suspended plans to impose tariffs on Mexico, tweeting the country "has agreed to take strong measures" to stem the flow of Central American migrants into the United States.

But the deal the sides agreed to falls short of some of the dramatic overhauls the U.S. had pushed for.

A "U.S.-Mexico Joint Declaration" released by the State Department said the U.S. "will immediately expand the implementation" of a program that returns asylum-seekers who cross the southern border to Mexico while their claims are adjudicated. Mexico will "offer jobs, healthcare and education" to those people, the agreement stated.

Mexico has also agreed, it said, to take "unprecedented steps to increase enforcement to curb irregular migration," including the deployment of the Mexican National Guard throughout the country, especially on its southern border with Guatemala. And Mexico is taking "decisive action to dismantle human smuggling and trafficking organizations as well as their illicit financial and transportation networks," the State Department said.

The U.S. announced in December that it would make some asylum seekers wait in Mexico while their cases were being proceeded – a begrudging agreement with Mexico that has taken months to scale and that has been plagued with glitches, including wrong court dates, travel problems and issues with lawyers reaching their clients.

Homeland Security officials have been ramping up slowly, and were already working to spread the program along the border before the latest blowup. About 10,000 people have been returned to Mexico to wait out the processing of their immigration cases since the program began Jan. 29. More than 100,000 migrants are currently crossing the U.S. border each month, but not everyone claims asylum and migrants can wait an entire year before making a claim.

Any sizable increase may also be difficult to achieve. At the San Ysidro crossing alone, Mexico had been prepared to accept up to 120 asylum seekers per week, but for the first six weeks only 40 people per week were returned.

Trump's had announced the tariff plan last week, declaring in a tweet that, on June 10, the U.S. would "impose a 5% Tariff on all goods coming into our Country from Mexico, until such time as illegal migrants coming through Mexico, and into our Country, STOP." U.S. officials had laid out steps Mexico could take to prevent the tariffs, but many had doubts that even those steps would be enough to satisfy Trump on illegal immigration, a signature issue of his presidency and one that he sees as crucial to his 2020 re-election campaign.

After returning from Europe today, though, Trump tweeted, "I am pleased to inform you that The United States of America has reached a signed agreement with Mexico." He wrote that the "Tariffs scheduled to be implemented by the U.S. on Monday, against Mexico, are hereby indefinitely suspended."

He said Mexico has agreed to work to "stem the tide of Migration through Mexico, and to our Southern Border" and said those steps would "greatly reduce, or eliminate, Illegal Immigration coming from Mexico and into the United States."

The reversal marked a change in tone from earlier today, when his spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters in Ireland before Trump took off: "Our position has not changed. The tariffs are going forward as of Monday." Trump has often said unpredictability helps him negotiate.

8:34 p.m.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump tweeted this evening an agreement had been reached with Mexico to stem the tide of immigrants coming into that country and working their way into the U.S., thus averting 5 percent tariffs on Mexico that would have gone into effect Monday.