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Mexican President Peña Nieto preparing plan for Trump deportations

By Andrew V. Pestano
The administration of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, who is seen here during a joint press conference in the White House with U.S. President Barack Obama in July, is preparing for the possibility that a Donald Trump administration could deport millions of people to Mexico. File Photo by Leigh Vogel/UPI
The administration of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, who is seen here during a joint press conference in the White House with U.S. President Barack Obama in July, is preparing for the possibility that a Donald Trump administration could deport millions of people to Mexico. File Photo by Leigh Vogel/UPI | License Photo

MEXICO CITY, Nov. 15 (UPI) -- A spokesman for Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto said the government is working on a plan to deal with mass deportations under the next U.S. president, Donald Trump.

"There are instructions from the president to analyze in all the agencies of the State where there could be contingencies or in which opportunities should be addressed," Eduardo Sanchez, Peña Nieto's spokesman, said on Monday, adding that additional details will be revealed Wednesday.

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Sanchez said the topic of deportations would be part of any discussion between Peña Nieto and Trump. The efforts are being coordinated by Mexican Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz in hopes to have measures in place if deportations were to begin under Trump's administration, La Nacion reports.

"We will have to see how many of those deportations, usually done by the United States government to the countries where the illegal immigrants are from, are for Mexico," Sanchez said during a press conference. "Of course this and other matters will be part of the agenda that Mexico brings to the table during the bilateral meetings that will take place with the government-elect of President Donald Trump."

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One of Trump's promises within his first 100 days in office is to "begin removing the more than 2 million criminal illegal immigrants from the country and cancel visas to foreign countries that won't take them back."

RELATED Key proposals for Trump's first 100 days face uphill battle despite a GOP Congress

Though one of Trump's campaign promises was initially to deport all undocumented immigrants -- estimated to be about 12 million -- living in the United States, the president-elect for now has focused on deporting up to 3 million undocumented migrants who "are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers."

We have a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we're going to incarcerate," Trump said in a recent interview on CBS's 60 Minutes. "But we're getting them out of our country, they're here illegally."

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