Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena and Foreign Minister Antony Blinken proposed this Thursday in Washington to form a working group to discuss the buoys with saws that Texas has placed along the border in the waters of the Rio Grande (Rio Grande in the United States) and that Mexico denounces causing the deaths of at least two immigrants attempting to cross it.
Getting rid of the “floating wall” has been one of Mexico’s top priorities in bilateral relations since Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott last month ordered the placement of the buoys to stop irregular transit of migrants and strengthen border security. The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit to force the state to remove these artifacts; The Mexican government has issued two diplomatic complaints about the buoys.
The lawsuit “helps us a lot” in a “very delicate situation,” Bárcena assured at a press conference after his meeting with Blinken at the State Department in Washington. It was the first between the two since the appointment of the diplomat to replace Marcelo Ebrard in June.
“I think we’ll find a solution,” said the secretary. “I leave with the very hopeful prospect that we may form a working group” that will determine what steps to take once the US courts rule on the lawsuit, which is expected to happen in September.
For his part, Blinken defended the lawsuit in court: “We must let the legal process take its course. This is the right course of action for a country that adheres to the rule of law.”
Mexico claims that the placement of the buoys, which that government says are mostly on the Mexican side of the border, violates the 1944 Water Treaty. A barbed wire fence and earthworks on an island between the Mexican city of Piedras Negras and American Eagle Pass violate the 1970 Boundary Treaty and can clog the riverbed that causes flooding in the rainy season.
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In addition to Blinken, the Chancellor also met with White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas during her visit to Washington, with whom she discussed immigration and economic issues and agreed to increased cooperation to combat fentanyl, the synthetic drug , which causes the most overdose deaths in the US and is manufactured by Mexican cartels.
Washington complains that the cartels are making the drug in secret labs in Mexico. The president of the neighboring country, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, denies that the synthetic fabric is made in his country.
The Mexican authorities are working on drafting a “Chemical Precursors Control Strategy and Health Protection” involving the Minister of the Navy, the Minister of Health and the Federal Commission for Protection against Health Risks, the diplomat stressed.
López Obrador’s government is already working on the “real-time surveillance, tracking and localization of regulated chemical substances,” the synthetic precursors to the drug that are being legally imported into the country to be used in areas such as pharmaceuticals or cosmetics. It also aims to “monitor, track, and locate the regulated chemical substances entering Mexico in real time, and to create a database of the subjects, substances, quantities, and regulated activities performed on them in order to establish a legal to ensure tracking.” ” .
“The goal is to have only two legal entry points, one in the Pacific and one in the Atlantic,” he explained.
The detection of precursors illegally entering the country for illegal use is more complicated. As he explained, among other things, these substances reach Mexico in small quantities, which makes their detection more difficult. The country has set up specialized laboratories in the ports of entry and airports, in which up to 72 different chemical precursors can be detected. A digital tracking system is also being tested.
Bárcena’s visit to Washington coincided with the assassination of the presidential candidate in Ecuador, who had denounced threats from the Mexican cartels. Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso announced that he had asked the US FBI for assistance and assured that the federal police would send a team. Blinken declined to acknowledge the message. For his part, Bárcena expressed his “deep concern about the event” and reiterated his government’s willingness to support Ecuador in whatever it wishes. The senior official claimed there was no evidence of the involvement of criminal groups in her country in the killing of Fernando Villavicencio.
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