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Migrants in the United States
American authorities have reported 10,000 daily border crossings at the border with Mexico in recent weeks.
Published on December 25th, 2023 12:40 p.m. Updated on December 25th, 2023 1:05 p.m
Reading time: 2 minutes
People walk through the streets of Tapachula, Chiapas state, Mexico, on December 24, 2023, with the goal of reaching the United States. (AFP)
They take part in the “exodus from poverty”. Several thousand people seeking to enter the United States set off from the city of Tapachula in southern Mexico on Sunday, December 24th. According to the BBC, this caravan already stretched over 15 km and numbered around “7,000 people, mainly from South and Central America.” These include families with children.
Between October 2022 and September 2023, more than 2.4 million migrants were intercepted at the land border between Mexico and the United States. A higher number compared to previous years and a dangerous route, especially when it comes to crossing the Rio Grande, the river that separates the two countries: on Thursday, two would-be immigrants drowned at the border, near the city Matamoros, attempting to cross a muddy area of the river where the water mixes with trash.
Migrants cross the Rio Grande amid trash in Matamoros on the Mexico-United States border, December 21, 2023. (ANGEL DOMINGUEZ / AFP)
To discuss the migration issue, American President Joe Biden and his Mexican counterpart Andrés Manuel López Obrador spoke by phone on Thursday.
A bilateral meeting on Wednesday
On Friday, the Mexican president confirmed the holding of a bilateral meeting on December 27 with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of National Security Alejandro Mayorkas and White House National Security Adviser Liz Sherwood Randall.
Recognizing an increase in the number of migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba and Ecuador crossing Mexico toward the United States, Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador vowed to step up measures to detain migrants in the south of the country, on the border with Guatemala.
American police officers monitor people waiting to cross the Mexico-United States border in Eagle Pass, Texas, on December 22, 2023. (CHANDAN KHANNA / AFP)
“The agreement is that we continue to work together and we already have a proposal to strengthen our plans,” the Mexican president told reporters. As the migration crisis in the United States embarrasses Joe Biden ahead of the upcoming election year, the American delegation will “emphasize the need for legal avenues and additional action from partners across the region,” they said. American authorities announced this on Friday.
Given the daily arrival of thousands of migrants from Mexico – according to the Border Patrol, 10,000 daily crossings in the last few weeks – the American authorities say they are overwhelmed. Texas, Arizona and California recently closed border crossings and the Border Patrol said it had to redeploy its staff to focus on intercepting and registering migrants.