<Edit, November 27:> It was great talking to Greg Sargent yesterday for an excellent New Republic piece that embeds the below graphic.

All this paves the way for larger deceptions later. Bank on it: The moment Trump takes office, the lower apprehension numbers will magically become real metrics. Fox News will start trumpeting them and he’ll start claiming the border has achieved pacification due to his strength. Indeed, Trump very well may credit his current threat of tariffs with “forcing” Mexico to make the lower numbers of border crossings a reality.

…[W]e may not be prepared for the gale-force agitprop that’s about to hit us.

</Edit>

Yesterday the President-Elect promised to levy tariffs on Mexico and Canada for not doing enough to stop migration to the U.S. border.

However, Mexico’s security and migration forces (green in the chart) are already encountering and impeding, in their territory, about as many migrants as U.S. forces do at the border. In July, they stopped more people than their U.S. counterparts did.

(Mexico hasn’t yet updated its September and October numbers. Underlying numbers are in the image’s alt text.)