Sheinbaum Says No Caravans Are Headed to the U.S. After Trump’s Tariff Threat

Economic Warfare & Trade Policy › Trade & tariffs

Featured image: Vehicles in Ready and SENTRI lanes at the San Ysidro Port of Entry on the U.S.-Mexico border, in a September 2016 file photo. Photo: Donna Burton, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Wikimedia Commons, public domain. Cropped to 16:9.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Friday, Nov. 13, that no migrant caravan is currently traveling through Mexico toward the U.S. border, a day after President Donald Trump threatened to immediately double tariffs on Mexico if it did not stop groups of migrants walking north.

Key points from Sheinbaum’s Friday morning press conference, as reported by Reuters, and from Reuters’ Nov. 12 report on Trump’s tariff threat.

“There is no caravan currently in transit through our country on its way to the (US) border,” Sheinbaum said at her daily morning news conference, Reuters reported. She said there are two migrant caravans in Mexico. “One dissolved while en route, and most of its members have already returned to their countries of origin, and another caravan is only just forming.”

That account followed Trump’s Thursday warning. “Here we go again!” he wrote on social media, according to Reuters. “They will not be accepted! MEXICO MUST STOP THEM, NOW, and if they do not do so, the Tariffs on Mexico will be IMMEDIATELY DOUBLED. MEXICO, THE GOVERNOR OF TEXAS, THE VERY LIBERAL NEW GOVERNOR OF TEXAS, OUR GREAT BORDER PATROL, & ICE, HAVE BEEN SO INFORMED. There will be no leniency!”

Reuters identified the “new governor” of Texas as Democrat Gina Hinojosa, and reported that Trump, after the Nov. 3 midterm elections, had told reporters, “I am sure the new governor is going to want to have security at the Texas border.” The Boston Report has not independently reviewed Texas’s certified election results for this article.

What is known about the group walking north

An estimated 1,500 people, mostly from Central America, set off on Tuesday from the southern city of Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala, Reuters reported on Thursday. The same report said the migrants are hoping that last week’s Democratic victory, which gives the party control of the U.S. Congress starting in January, could open pathways for them to live and work in the United States. That is Reuters’ account of the migrants’ hopes, not a statement of any policy change. Congress has not, in the reporting reviewed here, enacted a new legalization program.

On Thursday, before Friday’s comments, Sheinbaum had already recognized that a group of people were walking north toward the United States, Reuters reported. She said then that no migrant caravans had arrived at the U.S. border since Trump returned to power last year, that people in the caravan had been informed of how difficult it is to enter the United States, and that Mexico was looking to return them to their countries of origin. “There will be no acts of repression,” she added, according to Reuters.

Reuters also reported that some local media had said authorities in the southern state of Chiapas had turned back migrants seeking to join the group this week. Mexico’s migration institute and the Chiapas state government did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment, the Thursday report said. The Boston Report has not independently confirmed those local-media accounts of turnbacks.

The tariff threat, and the trade talks behind it

Trump did not, in the social-media post quoted by Reuters, state the current tariff rate on Mexican goods or the rate that would apply if the duties were doubled. This report therefore does not assign a dollar or percentage figure to the threat. Reuters noted that the United States and Mexico are negotiating a trade agreement after Trump chose in July not to extend the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade pact. Those talks, and any existing tariff schedule, are the backdrop for a threat to use tariffs as leverage over migration — but Reuters did not publish a table of current rates in the Thursday article, and The Boston Report is not estimating one.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin wrote on social media after Trump’s threat, “We will utilize all assets to make sure our borders are secure,” Reuters reported. “This illegal migrant caravan will NOT be allowed to enter our country. Full stop.”

Reuters wrote that the Trump administration’s immigration policies had mostly stopped the flow of migrants to the southern border, leaving many Mexican migrant shelters empty, and that Trump was elected to a second term in 2024 in part over voter concern about the border. The same report said Trump has, in recent months, said the issue has become less politically potent for him and for fellow Republicans, and that he has acknowledged political backlash from his administration’s deportation program through Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

On Sunday, Trump told the CBS program “60 Minutes” that the deportation force had been “too tough” and that he was open to making an immigration deal with Democrats after they take control of Congress, Reuters reported. Friday’s Supreme Court decision to hear a challenge to his southern-border asylum suspension, a policy that remains in effect while the appeal proceeds, is a separate legal track from the tariff threat and from any future legislative deal.

What Sheinbaum’s Friday remarks do — and do not — settle

Sheinbaum’s Friday statement, as Reuters reported it, is a claim about current movement inside Mexico: that no caravan is now in transit toward the northern border, that one group has largely broken up, and that another is only beginning to form. It does not, by itself, confirm or withdraw Trump’s Thursday description of a caravan that “must” be stopped, and it does not say whether the people who left Tapachula on Tuesday are among those who, in her account, have turned back. Reuters’ Friday dispatch did not report a new comment from the White House or from Mullin in response to her remarks.

The Associated Press, in a Spanish-language report, similarly described Sheinbaum as saying that no caravan had reached the United States since 2025 and as avoiding a direct clash with Trump. The Christian Science Monitor, in a Nov. 13 report from the migration route, described renewed hope among some migrants but little chance of reaching the U.S. border. Those accounts are consistent with Sheinbaum’s public line that the groups have not arrived at the border; they are not an independent head count of the 1,500 people Reuters said left Tapachula.

For travelers, shippers and anyone following U.S.-Mexico trade, the immediate question is whether the White House treats Sheinbaum’s account as satisfying Thursday’s demand. As of the Reuters Friday report, that had not been answered in public.

Sources

• Reuters, via Investing.com: No migrant caravans headed to US, says Mexico President (Nov. 13, 2026)
• Reuters: Trump threatens to double tariffs on Mexico if it does not halt migrants (Nov. 12, 2026)
• Associated Press (Spanish): Mexican president avoids a clash with Trump and says no caravan has reached the U.S. since 2025
• The Christian Science Monitor: Renewed hope among migrants but little chance of reaching U.S. border (Nov. 13, 2026)
• SCOTUSblog: Supreme Court agrees to hear case on Trump administration’s suspension of asylum (Nov. 13, 2026)