The Biden administration said it will reopen this week four ports of entry at different parts of the southern border, as they had been closed to redirect resources to deal with the surge in unlawful migration between them.
Concretely, they are: Eagle Pass, Texas; San Ysidro, California; Lukeville, Arizona; and Nogales, Arizona.
The decision, however, doesn't necessarily mean that figures are dropping. On the contrary: Customs and Border Protection agents encountered more than 300,000 migrants at the southern border in December, a new monthly record.
Administration officials also noted reports of a new large caravan heading for the country, but one told NBC News that recent reports indicated it has "not moved in several days" from a city in southern Mexico.
"We're encouraged to see that it isn't moving and seems to be reducing significantly in size," the official told the outlet.
U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, traveled to Mexico last week to continue discussing ways to stem the flow of migrants reaching the country's territory.
In one of his regular morning press conferences, Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, commonly known as AMLO, said that Biden had asked for for meeting because he was "worried about the border situation, having reached an unseen number of migrants, between 10,000 and 12,000 a day."
"This led to the shutting of customs and border crossings in some areas. He talked to me to say we had to look for a solution together, as we have always done. So I proposed the meeting," added AMLO. He also mentioned that keeping the border crossings open was something agreed on in the meeting.
"We also talked about paying attention to the causes of migration, supporting the countries whose people, out of need, leave their towns. We informed them about how our country still helps out with programs and other actions we are conducting in the Caribbean and Central America," said AMLO.
Among the actions taken by Mexico is the resumption of deportation flights of Venezuelan migrants along with the Maduro government. Mexico's Ministry of Foreign Relations announced that "both ountries are working on putting social programs in place in Venezuela that will benefit repatriated individuals and others by placing them with productive projects and paid internships in workplaces."
These projects and internships will be based on the Mexican programs Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life) and Jóvenes Construyendo el Futuro (Youths Building the Future) and linked to the Venezuelan program Vuelta a la Patria (Returning Home).
"Mexico and Venezuela reiterate their commitment to addressing the structural causes that lead to irregular migration in the region, and to achieving the humanitarian management of migration, in order to move towards safe, orderly and regular migration with full respect for human rights," the ministry added.
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