The President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, received this Wednesday in Mexico City the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the Secretary of National Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, with the dramatic images in the background of a caravan of thousands of migrants from, among others, Honduras, El Salvador, Venezuela or Haiti, which cross the country from south to north.
Senior Washington officials, along with White House national security adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, arrived with a list of specific demands, including calling for some of the migrants to be redirected to southern Mexico and greater control of the railroads they use to cross the country , including the train known as “The Beast”, an inconsiderate form of transport, and the proposal to create incentives so that they do not travel further to the border, such as visas to remain in the countries through which they are traveling towards Promise of a better life in the United States.
The meeting arose from a telephone conversation between López Obrador and President Joe Biden last Thursday, in which both leaders agreed, in addition to the conditions of the visit, to open several closed emergency border crossings due to an avalanche of people arriving at the border between both countries . The average number of “encounters,” a euphemism that masks the number of immigration arrests made by Border Patrol agents, reached a weekly average of 9,600 in early December. Last Tuesday the number fell slightly to 6,000.
The 2023 fiscal year (which runs from the previous October to September) left more than 3.2 million “encounters”, a figure that broke all records; also that of 2022, which broke the previous record with 2.7 million arrests.
The immigration crisis and border management are a constant headache for Biden, who took office promising to “humanize” it and reverse the tough policies of his predecessor, Donald Trump. Nearly three years later, the harsh reality of an unprecedented crisis has forced the president, who is seeking re-election next year in a campaign that will be marked by ideological warfare over these issues, to sharpen his speech. Perhaps the biggest sign of this change in attitude came in October, when the White House agreed to expand the border wall, even as the Democratic president had touted the idea of abandoning one of Trump's iconic projects.
Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena, who recalled in a message that the bilateral meeting is at Mexico's request, will accompany President López Obrador this Wednesday “to promote bilateral cooperation on issues of human mobility, the regular management of migratory flows and expansion “Together with the rest of the delegations of Mexico and the United States, the roads are legal for immigration,” said the Foreign Minister's statement on social networks. But the task will be greater considering what demands the United States will make to address this immigration crisis, which is also causing domestic political problems.
The Republican Party in Congress has managed to link the fate of military aid to Ukraine with tightening border management. They are seeking to remove commitments from the Biden administration such as limiting asylum grants to 5,000 people per day, raising requirements so that immigrants must demonstrate a “credible threat” that will prevent them from returning to their country, or equipping applicants for an asylum application with GPS, as used, for example, in house arrests.
Last week, the Senate went on Christmas recess after rushing through the deadlines for reaching an agreement on such pressing issues. The pact to deal with the problems at the southern border must wait for the political course to resume, while the mayors of cities such as Eagle Pass or El Paso (in Texas) or Yuma in Arizona declare themselves overwhelmed by a crisis that also affects New York and Chicago or Washington, where the hawkish governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, has been chartering buses for months to bring the problems he has in his state to the doors of these Democratic strongholds.
Abbott just signed a law allowing police to immediately deport undocumented people. It is one of the strictest regulations ever passed in the United States and has led to the condemnation of the Mexican president.
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