Playas de Tijuana, Mexico - Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum promised Sunday to defend her country's citizens living in the US, a day before Donald Trump was set to return to the White House with plans to carry out mass deportations.

"In this new period that arrives tomorrow with President Trump: First, we are going to defend Mexicans there," Sheinbaum said at an event in the central state of Puebla.

Sheinbaum alluded to, but did not explicitly mention, the incoming US president's plan to deport undocumented immigrants living in the US, which would include millions of Mexicans.

She said her government had hired lawyers to provide support to immigrants through Mexico's roughly 50 consulate offices in the US.

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"And if they decide to return to Mexico or come to Mexico, they are welcome here, with open arms," Sheinbaum said.

The leftist president noted, however, that her predecessor and mentor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, got "along well" with Trump during the Republican's first term from 2017 to 2021.

"That's why I think we'll reach a good understanding," Sheinbaum said. "But, in any case, let it be well understood, let it be heard far away: Mexico is nobody's colony, nobody's protectorate."

In the run-up to his return to office, Trump has repeatedly lashed out at Mexico, threatening to impose stiff tariffs on imports from one of the US' biggest trading partners unless it stops people and drugs from crossing the border.

Sheinbaum has remained calm but firm amid the threats. Mexico's government said that some 400,000 jobs at US companies that manufacture in Mexico could be lost if Trump enacted his threat, and warned that the tariffs would also drive up US inflation.

The Mexican president has also called out the illegal trafficking of weapons from the US into her country.

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"Seventy percent of the illegal weapons seized from criminals in Mexico come from your country," Sheinbaum wrote in a letter to Trump in November. "We do not produce these weapons, nor do we consume synthetic drugs. Tragically, it is in our country that lives are lost to the violence resulting from meeting the drug demand in yours."

"If even a small percentage of what the United States allocates to war were instead dedicated to building peace and fostering development, it would address the underlying causes of human mobility," she added.