© Provided by Agencia EFE
Mexico City, March 14 (EFE) .- The President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, spoke this Monday regarding “work and migration” with Alejandro Mayorkas, head of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), who is carrying out his fourth visit to the country.
“We held a meeting with Alejandro Mayorkas, US Secretary of Homeland Security; we discussed labor and migration issues. We continue to promote cooperation for development with justice and respect for human rights,” the president shared on his social networks.
Mayorkas’ visit, announced just last Friday, passed with secrecy and without a public agenda at the National Palace, where the United States ambassador, Ken Salazar, and the Mexican Secretaries of Security, National Defense, Navy and Of Foreign Affairs.
The officials of both countries “exchanged points of view on the migratory panorama of the region in the near future and the need to increase efforts to have safe, orderly and regular flows,” according to Roberto Velasco, head of the North America Unit of the Foreign Ministry.
“In addition, both delegations agree on the importance of speeding up cooperation efforts for development,” Velasco said on his social networks.
Mayorkas’ tour, which will visit Costa Rica on Tuesday, is to discuss with local officials “a regional approach to stop irregular migration and create viable legal pathways,” according to Washington on Friday.
President López Obrador had announced in his morning conference Monday that he would talk regarding “migration, the southern border, the northern border, cooperation programs for development, customs and everything that has to do with the Mexico-United States relationship.”
This official trip occurs following López Obrador announced on Friday that he will tour El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize and Cuba in May to address the migratory wave that the region is facing and his proposals to “address the causes.”
The Mexican president has raised his demands for Washington to approve an immigration reform that regularizes 11 million undocumented immigrants, a plan for temporary work visas and investment in social programs in southern Mexico and Central America.
Mayorkas’ visit also comes following in recent weeks, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, dozens of citizens of those countries have come to the US-Mexico border to seek asylum from Washington.
In addition, this Monday there were regarding 30 clashes between Mexican cartels and the Army that forced the temporary closure of international bridges from Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, to the United States.
The region is experiencing a record migratory flow to the United States, whose Customs and Border Protection (CBP) office detected more than 1.7 million undocumented immigrants on the border with Mexico in fiscal year 2021, which ended last September.
(c) EFE Agency
