2023-12-27 06:22:02
MEXICO CITY (AP) — A group of top U.S. officials will meet with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Wednesday in what many see as an attempt to get the Mexican government to do more to contain a surge in migrants arriving at the southern border of the United States territory.
López Obrador has said that he is willing to help, but he also assures that he wants to see progress in the United States’ relations with Cuba and Venezuela — two of the countries that send the most migrants — as well as more aid for the development of the region.
Both sides face intense pressure to reach an agreement following the failure of some previous measures, such as limiting direct transfer to Mexico or the deportation of some migrants. This month, the United States detained up to 10,000 migrants a day on its southern border.
Washington has had problems processing thousands of migrants at the border or providing shelter for them once they arrive in cities in the north of the country. Mexican industries were hit last week following the United States briefly closed two major border rail crossings in Texas, saying Border Patrol agents had to be reassigned to deal with the high number of immigration crossings.
Another border crossing remained closed in Lukeville, Arizona, and operations were partially suspended in San Diego and Nogales, Arizona. United States officials indicated that these closures were to reassign agents to assist in the processing of migrants.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken left open the possibility that these crossings might be opened once more in the event that Mexico provides more aid.
“Secretary Blinken will discuss unprecedented irregular migration in the Western Hemisphere and identify ways in which Mexico and the United States will address border security challenges, including actions that allow the reopening of important ports of entry along our shared border.” , his office said in a statement issued before Wednesday’s meeting.
Mexico has assigned more than 32,000 members of the armed forces and National Guard — regarding 11% of its forces — to immigration enforcement, and the National Guard now detains many more migrants than criminals.
But the deficiencies of this measure were revealed on Tuesday, when elements of the National Guard made no attempt to stop a caravan made up of around 6,000 migrants, most of them from Central America and Venezuela, when they passed in front of the main point immigration inspection in the state of Chiapas, near the border with Guatemala.
Mexico has previously allowed these types of caravans to advance, trusting that they will get tired of walking along the highway. No caravan has ever traveled the 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) to the U.S. border.
But letting them get tired — forcing Venezuelans and other migrants to walk through the dangerous jungle of the Darien Gap in Panama, or taking migrants off passenger buses in Mexico — is no longer working.
Many of them have simply found other avenues. The number of migrants boarding freight trains to cross Mexico has been such that one of the country’s two main railway companies was forced to suspend services last September for safety reasons.
The US delegation would like to see police operations to remove migrants from trains, just as Mexican authorities did a decade ago.
US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and National Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall will also be present at the meeting
What the United States has already done is demonstrate that the problems of one country on the border quickly become a problem for both countries. The closures of railroad crossings in Texas interrupt shipments going from Mexico to the United States, as well as the transfer of grains needed in Mexico to feed livestock.
López Obrador confirmed last week that U.S. officials want Mexico to take more steps to block migrants at its border with Guatemala, or make it harder for them to move through Mexico on trains, trucks or buses.
But the president said that in return he wants the United States to send more development assistance to the migrants’ countries of origin, as well as reduce or eliminate sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela.
“We are going to help, as we always do,” said the president. He added that “Mexico helps to reach agreements with the government of Venezuela.”
“In this case we also want the differences with Cuba to be addressed… I have already raised it with President Biden, that a bilateral Cuba-United States dialogue be opened,” he declared.
“But it is not only regarding containment,” he added, it is also regarding cooperation and solving “political problems” that encourage migration.
Mexico reported that it has detected 680,000 migrants moving through the country in the first 11 months of 2023.
Mexico agreed in May to receive migrants from countries such as Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba who have been rejected by the United States for not following rules that offer legal avenues for asylum and other forms of migration.
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