WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is holding talks Friday afternoon with Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador as a looming deadline to lift COVID-era restrictions at the U.S. southern border has magnified concerns over the administration's immigration policies and an influx in illegal border crossings.
The conversation — which is expected to touch on cooperation over migration, energy, security and economic growth — comes at the end of a tough week for the White House as it faces mounting criticism over its plans to end Title 42, a public health order allowing border agents to expel asylum-seekers to Mexico. Enacted during the Trump administration, officials said Title 42 was needed to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Earlier this week a federal judge halted the Department of Homeland Security's plans to suspend the order on May 23 while a growing number of Democrats up for reelection have joined Republicans in criticizing the administration's plans to wind down the policy. Republicans grilled Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Capitol Hill over a record number of border crossings that reached 210,000 arrests in March, the highest monthly total in two decades.
Biden has struggled to strike a balance on immigration, fulfilling campaign promises to his party's progressive wing while appeasing the concerns of centrists about illegal border crossings. Republicans have been hammering Democrats on the issue ahead of November's midterm elections.
After calls from some Democrats to produce a more detailed plan to replace Title 42, the Department of Homeland Security released a 20-page memo Tuesday laying out a six-point strategy that includes surging more personnel to the border, fast-tracking procedures for those who don't qualify for asylum and expanding temporary detention facilities along the border.
Encouraging Mexico's cooperation in handling an influx of border crossings once Title 42 is lifted will be a top agenda item in the president's call with López Obrador, according to a senior Biden administration official.
"We really will need to rely on our partnership more than ever to have a coordinated response, to surge additional staff and resources on both sides of our border to make sure that we have an orderly and humane response," said the official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity in advance of Biden's conversation.
While the administration grapples with Title 42, the White House has also sought to terminate a Trump-era policy known as "Remain in Mexico," which requires asylum-seekers, a majority from Central and South America, to stay in Mexico while their cases are being considered. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments earlier this week on whether the administration can scrap the program.
The two leaders are also expected to lay out their vision for the upcoming Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles in June. The U.S. will host leaders from the North, South and Central America, as well as the Caribbean, for the ninth summit.
The two leaders last met in person in November on the heels of the announcement of a Bicentennial Framework for Security, Public Health and Safe Communities agreement between the two countries. But tensions have since surfaced over the leader's differences on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The two countries have also clashed over Mexico's planned energy reforms, in which Lopez Obrador has sought to consolidate state control of Mexico's electric power market in a potential violation of the United States-Mexico-Canada trade pact.
A senior administration official said the administration has concerns about the potential negative impact of Mexico's energy reforms on U.S. private investment in Mexico and is working to resolve the disputes.
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