At Migration Talks, Mexico’s President Says U.S. Should Focus On Helping Poor in Region Karen DeYoung - Washington Post
go to original December 28, 2023

American delegation meets with Mexico's President about immigration (WHAS11)

Update: Mexican President Says Agreement Reached to Keep US Border Crossings Open (Al Jazeera)

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Wednesday in the Mexican capital and agreed to form a working group to jointly confront the record numbers of illegal immigrants arriving at the southern U.S. border.

“We had a very good, very important meeting,” Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena told reporters outside the national palace. She said the working group would convene in late January.

No other new initiatives were announced as the two governments grappled with the escalating crisis on their shared border, although López Obrador said in a statement posted on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, that “important agreements were achieved.”

He said he had asked President Biden for the meeting “to deal directly with matters of economic cooperation, security and migration. … Now more than ever, the good neighbor policy is indispensable.”

Blinken was accompanied on his one day trip by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and White House homeland security adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall.

In a news conference before Blinken’s midday arrival, López Obrador called on the Biden administration and the U.S. Congress to provide more resources for “poor people” in Latin America rather than putting up “barriers, barbed wire fences … and walls” to stop the flood of illegal migrants at the southern U.S. border.

“They know very well what our proposals are, what causes must be addressed,” López Obrador said of the United States. He suggested that the migration issue was being used “politically” in the United States. “Relations with the United States are good,” he said, “but there are elections there, and like everywhere, these issues are used.”

“We have to avoid putting people at risk, because these are very dangerous journeys, encouraged by human traffickers and organizations,” López Obrador said.

President Biden said earlier this month that he is “ready to find a compromise” on both “policy and funding” with Republicans in Congress who have demanded stricter immigration policies, including new restrictions to asylum access, expanded deportation power and other enforcement tools, but would not agree to an “extreme partisan agenda.”

Read the rest at Washington Post

Related: Mexico’s President Is Willing to Help With Border Migrant Crush but Wants Us to Open Talks With Cuba (Associated Press)

Related: The United States Pressures Mexico to Do More to Solve the Migration Crisis (EL PAÍS)

Related: Mexico’s Opposition Vows to Restore Order to US Relationship (The Hill)

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