NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov 15 – Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Monica Juma on Tuesday told Capital FM News that the ministry would not be taking any policy decisions regarding US President-elect Donald Trump’s threat to deport illegal immigrants, until such a time as he’s sworn in.
Juma says the ministry only formulates policy based on declarations by sitting Presidents and Trump is nine weeks from assuming what is widely seen as the most powerful seat in the world.
“He’s not even been sworn in, what is the issue now? We don’t operate on the basis of a directive from the President-elect of another country. That’s not the way we run foreign policy.”
According to sitting US President Barack Obama, the realities of the office could temper Trump’s more extreme views and it may be this that Kenya is counting on.
Countries such as Mexico have however taken pre-emptive measures and alerted their diplomats based in the US to prepare to handle the needs of its nationals who get caught in Trump’s deportation drag net.
READ: Mexico moves to help migrants after Trump win
Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu urged diplomats to get ready for a possible surge in consular assistance.
“The rights of Mexicans, inside and outside their country, are not negotiable,” the Foreign Ministry stressed.
The US president-elect on Sunday told CBS television that as many as three million undocumented immigrants with criminal records would be deported or incarcerated.
The United States has an estimated 11-12 million undocumented migrants, 30,000 of whom according to the International Organisation for Migration, are Kenyan.