Updated at 7:30 p.m. with new information and statement from Mexican president.
MEXICO CITY — Trying to mend fences, senior U.S. and Mexican administration officials met Thursday to smooth over growing differences on immigration, a border wall and trade. They said they made progress, but much work remains as tensions flare in a relationship long considered close and friendly.
Rex Tillerson, in his first solo foray as secretary of state, said he was delighted to be in Mexico City amid the "breadth of challenges and opportunities" facing the relationship.
“Although our two nations share a long history, our visit was forward-looking,” said Tillerson, adding that during their talks they agreed that "in a relationship filled with vibrant colors, two strong sovereign countries from time to time will have differences.”
Tillerson, accompanied by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, met with their Mexican counterparts. The meeting aimed to calm growing anxieties among immigrants, particularly Mexicans, anger and a sense of deepening humiliation in the neighboring nation that is also Texas’ most important trade partner.
"There will be no mass deportations," said Kelly, adding that the focus will be on criminal elements. Deportations will be coordinated with Mexican authorities, he said, adding "there will be no use of military force in immigration operations."
Tillerson and Kelly's comments were more measured than President Donald Trump's on Thursday. The president said the deportations were a military operation to remove "bad dudes" from the U.S.
The two Cabinet members also met with President Enrique Peña Nieto for less than an hour. Peña Nieto later issued a statement that said the meeting "took place in a moment when it's very important to strengthen dialogue."
The trip comes as the Trump administration outlines aggressive new border enforcement actions designed to increase deportations and send anyone who crossed the Southwest border illegally back to Mexico, even if that is not their country of origin. "The legal impossibility is that one government makes decisions that affect the other unilaterally,” said Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray.
He said during the talks the two governments recognized that the "phenomenon of immigration has changed" since Mexico is no longer a source of migration but a transit country. And Videgaray said the U.S. and Mexico agreed to focus not just on border enforcement but also attacking the root causes of migration from Central America. Last year, more than 400,000 Central Americans crossed the border, according to Customs and Border Protection, or CBP. Most were families or children traveling alone, and a majority arrived on the Texas-Mexico border.
“It will be a long road ahead, but today we have taken the first steps,” Videgaray acknowledged.
Immigration and rising tensions over a proposed border wall, and the effort to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, including imposing import taxes on Mexican goods, were all topics of discussion. NAFTA generates millions of jobs in Mexico and more than 5 million U.S. jobs, 500,000 of them in Texas. A high-level Texas delegation led by Secretary of State Rolando Palos is scheduled to visit Mexico City next week in an effort to underscore the importance of Mexico.
Talks are a reset
Some analysts see the high-level talks as an effort to reset the relationship. “This is an opportunity for Mexican authorities to find an interlocutor that will behave like the adult in the room,” said Carlos Bravo Regidor, a political analyst and journalism professor at CIDE, a public research and teaching center in Mexico City.
It took just over 30 days of a Trump presidency for nationalism to rise in Mexico. Meetings between diplomats of the two nations used to be standard protocol, a friendly exchange, at least in public.
Ironically, amid rising tensions, a new Gallup poll showed that Americans have a more favorable view of Mexico than they have in over a decade. Sixty-four percent of Americans say they have "very" or "mostly" favorable views of the country, up from 59 percent in 2016 and the highest since 2006.
What Texans want
Some Texans who travel back and forth to Mexico for business want the leaders of the two countries to iron out their differences.
"We need to build a bridge. What I notice being here is that there is a feeling that all Americans hate Mexicans, and that's not true," said Cheramie Law, 31, a Dallas resident in Mexico City on a business trip for a nonprofit. Law blamed social media for promoting the impression that people on both sides of the border hate each other.
Mexicans remain shocked at how quickly relations have turned sour between the countries.
Celendrino Ortiz, 56, a Mexico City taxi driver, offered this advice for Trump: “Mr. Trump has every right to defend his country and his people, but he should also be more respectful, act a little kinder, more noble, more conscientious. He needs to remind himself that in the end, we’re all human beings, and dignity is important.”
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