In This Article
- Introduction
- 1. What Trump Said
- 1.1 The Truth Social Warning
- 1.2 No Deadline, No Named Tariffs
- 2. The Caravan on the Road
- 2.1 Who Is Walking North
- 2.2 Why They Set Off Now
- 3. Mexico’s Answer
- 3.1 Sheinbaum’s Pushback
- 3.2 Two Caravans, One Border Record
- 4. The Tariffs Already in Place
- 4.1 What Mexico Already Pays
- 4.2 What Doubling Would Mean
- 5. The Trade Talks in the Background
- 5.1 A Deal Without the USMCA
- 5.2 America’s Biggest Trading Partner
- 6. The Legal Question
- 6.1 The Supreme Court Ruling
- 6.2 What Happens If He Acts Anyway
- 7. The Border Response
- 7.1 Homeland Security’s Pledge
- 7.2 Texas and the Agencies on Notice
- 8. What Comes Next
- 8.1 The Days Ahead
- 8.2 The Bottom Line
President Donald Trump has threatened to double the tariffs the United States charges on Mexican goods unless Mexico stops a migrant caravan that is walking north through its territory toward the American border. The warning came in a social media post on Thursday, November 12, 2026, and it put trade pressure back at the centre of the border argument between the two countries. About 1,500 people, most of them from Central America, set off on Tuesday from the southern city of Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala, and the group is still hundreds of miles from the United States. Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, pushed back on Thursday, saying no caravan has reached the northern border since Trump returned to office in January 2025. The White House has not said which tariffs would be doubled, when any increase would take effect, or whether the president can lawfully do it at all. This is the story of the threat, the caravan, the tariffs already in place, and the questions that remain unanswered, reported here as the Trump double tariffs Mexico migrant caravan November 2026 story.
1. What Trump Said
The warning arrived in the morning, in a post on Truth Social, the president’s own social media platform. It was short, it was written in capital letters in places, and it left no doubt about what the president wanted. Mexico, he said, had to stop the people walking north, and it had to do it now. If it did not, the price would be paid in trade.
The post came a week after the midterm election in the United States, in which Democrats won, and it came at a moment when Washington and Mexico City were already negotiating over trade. The president has used tariffs as a tool against Mexico before, and he has used them as a tool on migration before, but this was the first time in his second term that he had tied the two together in a single public threat aimed at a caravan that was still on the road.
What made the message stand out was not only its tone. It was the way it named everyone the president said had been told. The governor of Texas, the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement were all, in his words, informed. The message was addressed to Mexico, but it was also a signal to the agencies and officials on the American side that the president expected action, and that he expected it quickly.
1.1 The Truth Social Warning
The post began with three words: “Here we go again!” Then the president wrote that the migrants “will not be accepted” and that Mexico must stop them now. “MEXICO MUST STOP THEM, NOW, and if they do not do so, the Tariffs on Mexico will be IMMEDIATELY DOUBLED,” he wrote. “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!”
The words were aimed at a group of people who had left Tapachula two days earlier. Reuters reported that the group numbered about 1,500 people, mostly from Central America, and that they were walking north in the hope that the Democrats’ victory in the midterm election could open a way for them to live and work in the United States. The Spanish news agency EFE reported that the group had initially included roughly 2,000 people.
The president’s post did not name the countries the migrants were travelling from, and it did not give details of any other caravans. It spoke of large caravans forming and beginning what he called an illegal march through Mexico. The one group that has been identified in reporting is the Tapachula march, and the size of that group is the figure that has been reported by Reuters and EFE.
For people who follow the president’s use of social media, the style was familiar. The capital letters, the exclamation marks and the direct naming of officials are all part of how he has communicated since his first term. What was new was the target. This was not a tariff threat aimed at a trade dispute. It was a tariff threat aimed at a group of people on foot, hundreds of miles from the border, and at a government that says it is already managing them.
1.2 No Deadline, No Named Tariffs
For all its force, the post left the most important details out. It did not say how soon Mexico would have to act. It did not say which tariff rates would be doubled. It did not say whether existing trade exemptions would remain in place, or when any new duties would take effect. There was no date, no list of goods, and no timetable.
That matters because the United States does not charge Mexico a single tariff. It charges a range of them, on different goods, at different rates, under different rules. Some goods enter under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, known as the USMCA, and pay no duty at all. Others pay 25 percent. Steel and aluminium pay 50 percent. There are also sector-specific duties on top of those. To say that tariffs will be doubled is to raise a question before it answers one: doubled from what, on which goods, and for how long?
The White House did not fill in those gaps on Thursday. No follow-up statement set out the details, and no official named the rates that would change. That left businesses, traders and officials in both countries to guess at what the president meant, and to weigh how seriously to take a threat that had no deadline attached to it.
The absence of detail also left room for doubt about whether the threat would ever be carried out. A threat without a deadline is easier to walk back than one with a date on it. It is also easier to treat as a warning shot, a way of putting pressure on a government during a negotiation, rather than as a policy that has already been decided. Whether this one falls into that category is something only the coming days will show.
2. The Caravan on the Road
The people at the centre of this story are walking. They left Tapachula, a city in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, close to the border with Guatemala, on Tuesday, November 10. They are mostly from Central America, and they are travelling north through Mexico toward Texas. The journey is long, the road is hot, and the group is still far from the border it is heading for.
Caravans like this one have become a familiar part of the migration story in the Americas. Groups of migrants band together for safety on the road, walking in large numbers through towns and along highways, sometimes for weeks. They are visible, and because they are visible, they are often talked about in a way that individual travellers are not. They become a symbol, and symbols attract attention from politicians on both sides of the border.
This caravan is small by the standards of the groups that made headlines in earlier years, when thousands of people walked together. About 1,500 people is the figure reported by Reuters. EFE, the Spanish news agency, put the initial number at roughly 2,000. Either way, it is a modest group, and it is still in southern Mexico, a long way from the United States.
2.1 Who Is Walking North
The people in the group are mostly from Central America, according to Reuters. That is the region that has supplied the largest share of migrants travelling through Mexico in recent years, with people leaving Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua for a mix of reasons: poverty, violence, drought, and the hope of work in the United States.
They set off from Tapachula, which has become the starting point for many such journeys. The city sits near the border with Guatemala, and it is where many migrants first arrive in Mexico. From there, the road north runs through the state of Chiapas and then through Oaxaca, Veracruz and the long stretch of central Mexico that leads to the border states.
Walking is slow. A caravan on foot covers perhaps twenty to thirty kilometres a day, and the group will need weeks to reach the north if it keeps going. Along the way, people sleep in shelters, in churches, in public squares, and sometimes on the roadside. Aid groups and local churches often provide food and water. Mexican authorities sometimes offer buses to move people to other parts of the country, and sometimes they try to break the groups up.
What is known about this group is limited. There is no published list of names, no breakdown of how many are families and how many are travelling alone, and no account of where each person comes from. The reporting so far has focused on the size of the group and its starting point, and on the political reaction it has drawn, rather than on the people themselves.
2.2 Why They Set Off Now
According to Reuters, the people in the caravan set off in the hope that the Democrats’ victory in the midterm election last week could open pathways for them to live and work in the United States. That is a hope, not a promise, and it is not clear what it is based on. No Democrat has promised to open the border, and no law has changed since the election.
But hope does not need a law to travel. The election result was widely reported across Latin America, and the idea that a change in Washington might mean a change in border policy is one that has moved people before. After past elections, groups have set off in the belief that a new government, or a new balance of power, might be more welcoming than the one before it.
Whether that belief is right is another matter. The Trump administration has kept border enforcement tight since it returned to office in January 2025, and the president’s own message on Thursday made clear that the people in this caravan would not be accepted. The gap between what the migrants hope for and what the administration says it will do is the space in which this story is playing out.
There is also a simpler explanation for the timing. November is a month when the weather in southern Mexico is cooler than in the summer, and when the road is drier. Caravans have often set off in the autumn and winter for practical reasons, and the timing of this one may have as much to do with the season as with the election. That, too, is unconfirmed, and the reporting does not settle it.
3. Mexico’s Answer
Mexico’s response came on Thursday, from President Claudia Sheinbaum, at her daily morning news conference. She did not ignore the president’s threat, and she did not accept his description of the situation. She said that Mexico has prevented migrant caravans from reaching the United States border since Trump returned to office in January 2025, and she said that no caravan has reached the northern border in that time.
Her answer was measured. She did not threaten anything in return, and she did not raise her voice. She acknowledged that people were walking north, and she said that Mexican authorities were working to manage the groups. But she drew a line between a group on the road in the south and a group at the border in the north, and she said that line had not been crossed.
The exchange set up a familiar pattern in the relationship between the two countries. The American president makes a public demand, the Mexican president answers in public, and the two governments then work out the details behind closed doors. The public words are sharp. The private work is usually quieter, and it is the private work that decides what actually happens on the road.
3.1 Sheinbaum’s Pushback
“Since President Trump came into office, no migrant caravan has reached the northern border,” Sheinbaum said on Thursday, according to a translation of her remarks. It was a direct answer to the president’s claim that caravans were marching through Mexico toward the United States, and it was meant to be heard as a correction.
Sheinbaum acknowledged that two migrant caravans are currently travelling through southern Mexico, and she said that Mexican authorities are working to manage the groups. That is an important detail. It means the Mexican government is not denying that people are on the road. It is saying that it knows where they are, that it is dealing with them, and that they have not reached the border.
The Mexican president’s position is shaped by the politics of her own country as well as by the relationship with Washington. She has to show her own public that Mexico is not simply following orders from the United States, and she has to show Washington that Mexico is taking the issue seriously. Her answer on Thursday tried to do both at once.
There was no immediate public response from the Mexican government to the tariff threat itself by Thursday morning, and Sheinbaum was due to hold her news conference later that day. What she said there was the first formal answer, and it set the tone for what is likely to be a longer exchange between the two governments.
3.2 Two Caravans, One Border Record
The fact that there are two caravans on the road, not one, adds a layer to the story. The president’s post spoke of caravans in the plural, and Sheinbaum’s answer confirmed that there are at least two groups moving through southern Mexico. Neither group has been reported as close to the border, and neither has been reported as large.
The record that Sheinbaum pointed to is one that the Trump administration itself has used as evidence of success. Since the president returned to office in January 2025, the number of people crossing the border illegally has fallen sharply, and the administration has presented that fall as a result of its enforcement policies and of Mexico’s cooperation. If no caravan has reached the border in that time, it is a record that both governments can point to, for different reasons.
But a record is not a guarantee. Caravans have reached the border in the past, and they have done so even when governments said they would not. The question now is whether the groups on the road will keep walking, whether Mexican authorities will stop them or move them, and whether the president’s threat will change what happens next.
For the people in the caravans, the politics are distant. They are walking, and they are hoping. The argument between two presidents is something they will hear about on the road, if they hear about it at all, and it may change what happens to them long before they reach the border.
4. The Tariffs Already in Place
To understand what doubling the tariffs would mean, it helps to know what the tariffs are now. The United States does not charge Mexico one flat rate. It charges a patchwork of duties, built up over years of trade policy, and changed repeatedly in the course of 2025 and 2026. Some goods pay nothing. Some pay a quarter of their value. Steel and aluminium pay half.
That patchwork is the result of a trade relationship that is both close and complicated. The United States, Mexico and Canada have traded under a free trade agreement for more than thirty years, first under NAFTA and then under the USMCA. But the Trump administration has added tariffs on top of that agreement, and it has done so in waves, using tariffs as a tool for goals that have little to do with trade itself.
The threat on Thursday was the latest use of that tool. It was not a new tariff. It was a threat to double the tariffs that already exist, and it was aimed at a government that is already paying them. That is why the question of which tariffs would be doubled matters so much, and why businesses on both sides of the border were waiting for details that never came.
4.1 What Mexico Already Pays
Current United States tariffs on Mexican imports generally include a 25 percent duty on most goods that do not qualify for preferential treatment under the USMCA. That is the headline rate, and it applies to a wide range of products that cross the border every day, from manufactured goods to food and drink.
On top of that, there is a 50 percent tariff on steel and aluminium products imported from Mexico, alongside additional sector-specific duties. Steel and aluminium matter because they are the raw materials of the car industry, the construction industry and the energy industry, and because Mexico supplies a large share of what American factories use.
Goods that do qualify under the USMCA, and that meet its rules of origin, can enter the United States without paying duty. That is the part of the system that keeps the supply chains running, and it is the part that would be most at risk if a doubling were applied across the board. A doubling of a zero rate is still zero, but a doubling of the 25 percent rate would be 50 percent, and a doubling of the 50 percent rate on steel and aluminium would be 100 percent.
The figures give a sense of the scale. Mexico remains the United States’ largest overall trading partner, and bilateral commerce between the two countries totalled 96.34 billion dollars in September alone. Even a small change in the tariff rate on a trade flow that large would cost businesses hundreds of millions of dollars, and would be felt quickly in prices, in orders and in jobs.
4.2 What Doubling Would Mean
If the 25 percent rate were doubled to 50 percent, the cost of importing Mexican goods that do not qualify under the USMCA would rise sharply. American businesses that buy those goods would either pay more, or pass the cost on to their customers, or look for suppliers elsewhere. Mexican exporters would either accept lower prices, or lose orders, or both.
If the 50 percent rate on steel and aluminium were doubled to 100 percent, the effect would be even sharper. Steel and aluminium are not easy to replace quickly, and a doubling of the duty would make Mexican steel and aluminium far more expensive than the same products from other countries. That would hit the car industry first, because cars are built from steel and aluminium, and because the car industry is the largest single part of the trade between the two countries.
But none of this is certain, because the president did not say which rates would be doubled. He did not say whether the doubling would apply to all goods, or only to some, or whether goods that qualify under the USMCA would be affected at all. He did not say whether the doubling would be permanent, or temporary, or conditional on Mexico’s actions.
That uncertainty is itself a cost. Businesses that do not know what the tariff will be next week cannot plan their orders, their prices or their hiring. They can only wait, and waiting is expensive. The threat, even without details, has already done some of the work that a real tariff would do, by making the future less certain for everyone who trades across the border.
5. The Trade Talks in the Background
The threat did not come out of nowhere. It came in the middle of a negotiation. The United States and Mexico are currently talking about a trade agreement, after the president chose in July not to extend the USMCA, the trade pact that has governed commerce between the two countries and Canada since 2020. Those talks were already under way when the president posted his message on Thursday, and they were already covering the same issues: steel, manufactured goods, and the duties that apply to them.
That context matters, because it changes how the threat should be read. A tariff threat made during a trade negotiation is not the same as a tariff threat made out of the blue. It can be a bargaining move, a way of putting pressure on the other side to give ground. It can also be a sign that the negotiation is not going well, and that the president is losing patience with it.
Which of those it is will only become clear in the days ahead, when the two governments say more, or when the talks produce something, or when they do not. For now, the negotiation continues, and the threat hangs over it.
5.1 A Deal Without the USMCA
The USMCA was the agreement that replaced NAFTA in 2020, and it was negotiated by the Trump administration in its first term. It set the rules for trade between the United States, Mexico and Canada, and it was meant to last for sixteen years, with a review after six. That review was due in 2026.
In July, the president chose not to extend the pact. That decision did not end the agreement overnight, but it put its future in doubt, and it set off a round of negotiations between the United States and Mexico over what would replace it, or what would change in it. Those negotiations are still going on, and they cover tariffs, including the duties on Mexican steel and other manufactured products.
The president’s threat on Thursday landed in the middle of those talks. It was, in effect, a demand made in public, during a private negotiation, and it raised the stakes of that negotiation. If Mexico gives ground on migration, will the tariffs be left alone? If it does not, will the tariffs be doubled? The post did not say, and the negotiators on both sides will have to work out what it means.
For Mexico, the negotiation is about more than tariffs. It is about the future of a trade relationship that supports millions of jobs in Mexico, and millions more in the United States. For the United States, it is about whether the president can get what he wants on migration by using trade as leverage, and whether that leverage will work a second time.
5.2 America’s Biggest Trading Partner
Mexico is the United States’ largest overall trading partner. That is a fact that is easy to state and hard to overstate. The two countries buy and sell more from each other than the United States buys and sells from any other country, including China and Canada. In September alone, bilateral commerce between the two totalled 96.34 billion dollars.
That trade is not abstract. It is cars and car parts, it is electronics, it is food, it is oil, it is medical equipment, it is clothing and furniture and machinery. It is the supply chains that run across the border every day, with parts crossing back and forth several times before a finished product is sold. It is the factories in northern Mexico that employ hundreds of thousands of people, and the factories in the American Midwest and South that depend on what those factories make.
A tariff increase on a trade flow that large would not stay on one side of the border. It would raise prices for American consumers, it would raise costs for American manufacturers, and it would cost Mexican workers their jobs. That is why tariff threats against Mexico are taken seriously, even when they have no deadline and no details, and why the reaction from business groups on Thursday was one of concern rather than calm.
It is also why the threat is a gamble. If Mexico stops the caravans, the president can claim a win. If it does not, and the tariffs are doubled, the cost will be paid by businesses and consumers in both countries, and the blame for that cost will be argued over for months. If the tariffs are not doubled, after being threatened, the president’s next threat will carry less weight. Every option has a cost, and the president will have to choose one.
6. The Legal Question
There is a question hanging over the president’s threat that has nothing to do with migration or trade, and everything to do with the law. Can the president lawfully double the tariffs on Mexico? The answer, according to reporting on Thursday, is not clear, and it may be no.
The reason is a ruling by the Supreme Court earlier this year that limited the president’s tariff powers. The ruling, which came after a challenge to the way the administration had used tariffs, set limits on how far the president can go in raising duties without the approval of Congress. Bloomberg reported on Thursday that it is uncertain whether the president can lawfully double the levies, given that ruling.
That does not mean the threat is empty. Presidents have found ways around limits before, and the administration may have a legal theory for why a doubling would be allowed. But it does mean that any attempt to double the tariffs could be challenged in court, and that the challenge could take months or years to resolve.
6.1 The Supreme Court Ruling
The Supreme Court ruling earlier this year limited the president’s power to set tariffs on his own. The details of the ruling are complex, and they turn on the question of which laws the president can use to raise duties, and for what reasons. What is clear from the reporting is that the ruling put a check on the tariff powers the president had been using, and that it left open the question of how far he can go in the future.
That matters here because the threat to double the tariffs on Mexico is not a small step. Doubling a 25 percent rate to 50 percent, or a 50 percent rate to 100 percent, would be a major change, and it would be a change made by the president alone, without a vote in Congress. If the Supreme Court’s ruling limits that kind of action, then the president may not be able to do what he has threatened to do.
The administration has not said on what legal basis it would double the tariffs, or whether it has sought advice on the question. No statement from the White House on Thursday addressed the legal issue, and no official explained how the doubling would be justified under the law.
For businesses and for Mexico, the legal question is both a comfort and a worry. It is a comfort because it may mean the threat cannot be carried out. It is a worry because it may mean that the threat will be tested in court, and that the test will take a long time, during which the uncertainty will continue.
6.2 What Happens If He Acts Anyway
If the president does double the tariffs, the first response is likely to come from the courts. Businesses that pay the higher duties would have a reason to challenge them, and they would have the money to do it. Mexico could also challenge the move, either in an American court or through the trade dispute mechanisms that still exist between the two countries.
A court challenge would not stop the tariffs at once. It would take time, and during that time the higher duties would be in place, and businesses would be paying them. The cost would be real, even if the tariffs were later struck down. And if the tariffs were upheld, the cost would become permanent.
There is also a political question. If the president doubles the tariffs and the courts block him, he will have made a threat he could not carry out, and his opponents will say so. If he doubles them and the courts allow it, he will have shown that his tariff powers are wider than his critics thought, and he will be free to use them again. Either way, the legal question will shape what happens next, and it will shape how seriously future threats are taken.
For now, the question is unresolved. Bloomberg reported the uncertainty on Thursday, and no one in the administration has resolved it. That is one of the reasons the threat, for all its force, remains a threat rather than a policy.
7. The Border Response
While the tariff threat was aimed at Mexico, the border response was aimed at the United States side. The president’s post named the agencies that would have to act, and one of them answered within hours. The Department of Homeland Security said it would use all its assets to make sure the borders are secure, and the message was clear: the people in the caravan would not be allowed to enter.
That response was not a surprise. The administration has kept border enforcement tight since January 2025, and it has presented the fall in illegal crossings as one of its main achievements. The caravan is a test of that achievement, and the administration is determined not to fail it.
But enforcement is not the same as prevention. The caravan is still in southern Mexico, and it will take weeks to reach the border, if it gets there at all. The agencies named in the president’s post will have to watch it, and wait for it, and be ready for it when it arrives, if it does.
7.1 Homeland Security’s Pledge
“We will utilize all assets to make sure our borders are secure,” the Homeland Security Secretary, Markwayne Mullin, wrote on social media after the president’s tariff threat. It was a short message, and it was meant to be read as a promise: the department would do whatever it took to keep the border secure.
What “all assets” means in practice is not clear. It could mean more Border Patrol agents on the border, more surveillance, more coordination with the state of Texas, and more cooperation with Mexico. It could mean the use of military personnel, as has happened in the past. It could mean a mix of all of those.
The department has not said what it will do differently because of this caravan, or whether it will do anything differently at all. The border is already heavily guarded, and the number of people crossing illegally has already fallen sharply. The pledge may be a restatement of what the department is already doing, rather than a new plan.
But the words matter, because they show that the administration is treating the caravan as a security issue, not just a migration issue. The people in the group are not being described as asylum seekers, or as families looking for work. They are being described as a threat to the border, and the response is being described in the language of security.
7.2 Texas and the Agencies on Notice
The president’s post named the governor of Texas, the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, and said that they had been informed. The naming was deliberate. It was a way of saying that the federal government, the state government and the enforcement agencies were all on the same page, and that they all knew what was expected of them.
The reference to the governor of Texas was unusual. The president described the governor as “the very liberal new governor of Texas”, a phrase that stood out because Texas has long been governed by Republicans, and because the state’s governor has been one of the president’s allies on border enforcement. The post did not explain the phrase, and no official clarified it on Thursday.
What is clear is that Texas is the state where the caravan is heading, and that the state’s role will be central if the group reaches the border. The governor of Texas has the power to deploy the state’s National Guard, and to work with the Border Patrol on enforcement. The state’s cooperation will matter, whatever the president’s words about its governor mean.
The Border Patrol and ICE are the agencies that would have to deal with the caravan if it arrived. The Border Patrol guards the border itself. ICE enforces immigration law inside the country. Both have been named in the president’s post, and both will be watching the road north, and waiting to see whether the group keeps walking, and whether it gets smaller or larger as it goes.
8. What Comes Next
The story is not over. The caravan is still walking, the threat is still hanging in the air, and the negotiation between the United States and Mexico is still going on. What happens next will depend on three things: what the people in the caravan do, what the Mexican government does, and what the American president does.
If the caravan breaks up, or if Mexican authorities stop it, the president may decide that his threat has worked, and that there is no need to double the tariffs. If the caravan keeps walking, and if it reaches the border, the president may decide that he has to act, and that the tariffs must be doubled. If the caravan grows, or if another caravan sets off, the pressure will grow with it.
The coming days will provide the answers. For now, the facts are these: a threat has been made, a caravan is on the road, a government has answered, and a legal question remains open. The rest is still to come.
8.1 The Days Ahead
In the days ahead, the first thing to watch is the caravan itself. Will it keep walking north, or will it stop? Will it grow, or will it shrink? Will Mexican authorities offer buses, or will they try to break it up? The answers to those questions will shape everything else.
The second thing to watch is the Mexican government. Sheinbaum has said that no caravan has reached the border since January 2025, and she has said that her government is managing the groups on the road. What she does next will show whether that management is working, and whether it is enough to satisfy the president.
The third thing to watch is the White House. Will the president give a deadline? Will he name the tariffs that would be doubled? Will he say more about the legal basis for the move? Or will the threat be left as it is, a warning without a date, a way of putting pressure on a negotiation without committing to a policy?
The fourth thing to watch is the trade negotiation. The United States and Mexico are talking about a deal, and the threat has now become part of that conversation. Whether the talks produce an agreement, and whether that agreement covers migration as well as trade, will tell us whether the threat was a bargaining move or the start of something bigger.
8.2 The Bottom Line
President Donald Trump has threatened to immediately double tariffs on Mexico unless it stops a migrant caravan of about 1,500 people, mostly from Central America, that set off on Tuesday from Tapachula, near the Guatemalan border, and is walking north toward the United States. He made the threat in a Truth Social post on Thursday, November 12, 2026, writing that the migrants “will not be accepted” and that Mexico must stop them now. He did not say which tariffs would be doubled, or when, or on what legal basis.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum answered on Thursday that no caravan has reached the northern border since Trump returned to office in January 2025, and that her government is managing the two caravans currently in southern Mexico. The Homeland Security Secretary, Markwayne Mullin, said the department would use all its assets to keep the borders secure. The United States and Mexico are negotiating a trade agreement after the president chose in July not to extend the USMCA, and Mexico is the United States’ largest trading partner, with bilateral commerce of 96.34 billion dollars in September.
What is confirmed is the threat, the caravan, the response, and the negotiation. What is unconfirmed is whether the tariffs will actually be doubled, which rates would change, whether the president can lawfully do it after the Supreme Court ruling earlier this year, whether the caravan will reach the border, and whether the threat will change what Mexico does. The coming days will provide the answers.
