US to Deploy Teams to Central America to Help Curb Flow of Immigrants - Pompeo

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The United States will send teams to Central America to negotiate deals with the region's governments aimed at deterring the flow of migrants heading toward the United States, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a press briefing on Monday.

"We're going to work with the Central American countries, too. A good deal of the folks who are transiting into our country are coming through Mexico and are not originally from Mexico," Pompeo said. "We have teams that will be working there this week to get agreements with those countries to make sure their citizens are not the ones transiting through Mexico into the United States."

Pompeo said the State Department would evaluate Mexico's efforts on a daily basis and expressed confidence that progress would be made to deter the flow of migration.

President Donald Trump has backed off a threat to impose tariffs on Mexico over its failure to curb the surge in illegal migration into the United States

Trump first issued the threat on May 30, saying the US would impose a 5 percent tariff on all Mexican imports beginning on June 10 and increase the tariffs to 25 percent by October unless the country alleviates the illegal immigration crisis.

On Friday, Trump announced that the US and Mexico reached a deal under which Washington would suspend the introduction of tariffs.

READ MORE: Trump Predicts US, Mexico to Start ‘Great Cooperation’ After Signing Migration Deal

The deal stipulates that Mexico will deploy its National Guard to its southern border and work to dismantle human smuggling networks, according to the text of a joint bilateral declaration published by the State Department.

Caravans of migrants from Central American countries seeking asylum began to move toward the United States through Mexico last fall. Trump called the surge of arrivals a crisis and declared a national emergency in February to secure funds to build a wall on the border with Mexico.