ASEAN leaders to show concern over U.S. tariffs, Myanmar
Leaders of the Association of Southeast Asia Nations are set to show their deep concern over "unilateral tariff measures" without mentioning the United States at their meeting in Malaysia on Monday, according to a draft of the summit chairman's statement obtained by Kyodo News.
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who is chairing the meeting, said at the outset that ASEAN has displayed resilience amid "increasingly complex and sobering global developments," adding, "The global trading system is under further strain, with the recent imposition of U.S. unilateral tariffs."
Anwar said he had written to U.S. President Donald Trump to organize a meeting between Washington and ASEAN in an effort to negotiate on the tariffs as a region, rather than bilaterally.
The leaders met in Kuala Lumpur as their countries, like others, are set to be hit by Trump's so-called reciprocal tariffs, with U.S. duties on the 10 members of the regional grouping ranging from 10 to 49 percent.
According to the chairman's draft statement, the leaders will warn that the unilateral tariffs pose "complex and multidimensional challenges to ASEAN's economic growth, stability and integration," reaffirming the regional bloc's commitment to a "nondiscriminatory multilateral trading system, with the World Trade Organization at its core."
Following Trump's announcement of the tariffs, ASEAN trade ministers held a special virtual meeting in April and said they would not retaliate, which Malaysian trade minister Zafrul Abdul Aziz on Sunday characterized as a prudent stance that has averted an escalation of trade tensions.
Setting the tone ahead of the summit, the ASEAN trade and foreign ministers met separately on Sunday in the Malaysian capital.
Besides tariffs, the ongoing civil war in Myanmar, following a coup in February 2021 that ousted the elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, was believed to have been discussed at the summit, with the issue mentioned in the draft statement.
Peaceful protests against the coup morphed into armed resistance after a harsh military crackdown. Ethnic minority rebels and fighters aligned with a parallel government formed by ousted civilian leaders have been battling the military.
The junta in Myanmar and the other members of ASEAN reached a so-called five-point consensus in April 2021, including the need for an immediate end to violence. But little progress has been made, with thousands killed in the civil war.
Further humanitarian assistance for Myanmar, the central region of which was hit by an earthquake on March 28 that killed over 3,700 people, would be stressed, the draft statement showed, including a call by the leaders for greater international financial support.
Anwar said at the outset of Monday's summit that ASEAN has been able to take "positive steps" within an informal advisory group that he launched by requesting former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to serve as an adviser.
From Myanmar, Aung Kyaw Moe, permanent secretary of Myanmar's Foreign Ministry, is participating in the summit as ASEAN has only allowed a nonpolitical representative from the country to attend since October 2021, effectively excluding the junta chief.
ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
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Yomiuri Shimbun
34 minutes ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
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Yomiuri Shimbun
35 minutes ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
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Yomiuri Shimbun
an hour ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Mexico Braced for Trump's Mass Deportations. They Haven't Happened.
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The Department of Homeland Security's statistics office has stopped publishing monthly data on immigration enforcement. DHS did not respond to a question on why it's no longer available. Spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin told The Washington Post that more than 239,000 migrants had been deported since Trump took office. She did not respond to a query on whether that included people detained by both the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. If it does – as analysts said was likely – it would be significantly fewer than the 341,060 repatriated from February through June last year under President Joe Biden. McLaughlin noted the administration has intensified its raids in American communities. 'ICE made more at-large arrests in the first few weeks of President Trump's presidency than the entire last year under the previous administration,' she said. 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Mexico prepared for hundreds of thousands of deportees In the weeks before Trump took office, President Claudia Sheinbaum's government worked feverishly to build 10 shelters along the border, with a total capacity of 25,000 deportees. The logic was clear. At 5.5 million, Mexicans make up the largest share of migrants living without authorization in the U.S., according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. 'We really thought we would be inundated,' said the Rev. Patrick Murphy, a Catholic priest who runs the Casa del Migrante, a nongovernmental shelter here. In Tijuana, the federal government needed a big site, fast. It rented Flamingos, a party venue overlooking a busy highway, normally used for wedding and quinceañera celebrations. In other border cities, the military erected giant white tents to serve as shelters. Trump launched his deportation campaign with a stunning series of actions. He ordered the construction of a 30,000-bed detention center at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. He sent more than 200 Venezuelans to a harsh anti-terrorism prison in El Salvador. By late April, the administration claimed 'Skyrocketing Arrests and Deportations.' But illegal border crossings quickly plunged, reducing the number of people who could be returned relatively quickly and easily. In the first five months of 2025, Border Patrol agents apprehended just 32,776 Mexicans at the border – an 86 percent drop from the same period a year earlier. 'Border encounters are down to the lowest in American history,' said McLaughlin, the DHS spokeswoman. She acknowledged: 'Such miniscule encounters mean low number of returns.' In Latin America, some countries were startled to realize they were receiving fewer deportees from the United States, not more. The number arriving in Mexico, Guatemala and Colombia in the first five months of this year dropped more than 30 percent from the same period in 2024, according to data from their migration agencies. Historically, those nations' information hasn't necessarily been comparable with U.S. data. DHS figures include a broader range of deportees than some countries do – for example, foreigners returned without an immigration hearing. Still, in some major migrant-sending countries, the trend of declining numbers of deportees was clear. That wasn't true everywhere: Venezuela, whose authoritarian government had accepted very few U.S. deportation flights, reversed course under pressure from Trump. It's now receiving around two flights per week, according to Tom Cartwright, who tracks deportations by ICE for the immigrant advocacy group Witness at the Border. In Tijuana, Trump's border policies have transformed the landscape. In recent years, shelters run by charities were packed, sometimes leaving migrants to sleep on the ground outside. Now, many of the facilities are nearly vacant. 'There's no legal way to ask for asylum,' Murphy said. 'When people understand that, they don't come.' In a further shift, the U.S. government is increasing the percentage of Mexicans it deports directly to the south of the country, by plane. Toward the end of his administration, Biden intensified deportations. But he spared most undocumented immigrants from the interior of the country and said Congress should allow many to become citizens. The Trump administration is now focusing on removing such residents. 'We are putting the American people first by removing illegal aliens who pose a threat to our communities,' McLaughlin said. Andrew Selee, director of the Migration Policy Institute, cautioned that deporting such people is 'a complicated process.' 'The big numbers have always been people captured at the border,' he said. Deportations are now starting to accelerate Danilo Rivera, head of Guatemala's migration agency, says the number of deportees is picking up. More than 3,600 landed in May, a 44 percent increase from a month earlier. Guatemala's government agreed in a meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio to receive more planes carrying deportees, Rivera noted. 'Instead of five or six per week, we now have 14,' he said in an interview. U.S. deportation flights around the globe rose from 125 in April to 190 in May, the highest monthly total since September 2021, Cartwright said. Trump's giant tax and immigration bill will likely mean a far bigger jump in removals. Until now, the deportation operation has been constrained by the number of immigration agents, detention facilities and planes available. The legislation signed by Trump on Friday would fund thousands of additional immigration law enforcement agents and could more than double the number of detention beds to 100,000. 'I wouldn't encourage at all the Sheinbaum government to take down those tents' on the border, said Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America, an advocacy group. 'They're going to need them before the year is out.' Even with more resources, however, U.S. agents will likely run into obstacles detaining immigrants who have become a structural part of the workforce for farms, restaurants and hotels. Those industries have lobbied aggressively for an exemption from the raids. They won a reprieve from Trump last month, but it was quickly reversed. The men arriving in recent days at the government shelter in Tijuana exemplified the complexity of such deportations. One, Carlos Tafolla, 31, who picked grapes in California's Sonoma County, said he worked in the United States for 13 years and had three children who lived there with their mother, an American citizen. Another man, who identified himself only as José, a 45-year-old construction worker, said he had three children under the age of 12 in San Diego. He'd been away from Mexico for 20 years. Asked what he intended to do next, he looked out at the busy highway, still stunned. 'I don't know,' he said. 'I have no plans.'
