US and Mexican officials have hailed the success of talks held on Wednesday aimed at curbing historically high unauthorized immigration across their shared, 2,000-mile border that risks becoming a humanitarian disaster and an election year political crisis for Joe Biden.
After the closed-door meeting between the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the Mexican foreign minister, Alicia Bárcena, the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, hailed what he described as “important agreements”.
On Thursday, a Mexico-US joint communique shared by the White House said the meeting reaffirmed their shared commitment to “orderly, humane and regular migration”.
The countries said they would strengthen a sponsorship initiative for Venezuelan, Cuban, Nicaraguan and Haitian migrants and look to tackle its root causes such as poverty and violence. There will be enhanced efforts on disrupting human smuggling and trafficking and promoting legal “pathways”, while both delegations remained committed to “vital bilateral trade”.
Earlier on Thursday López Obrador told reporters that the two parties had agreed to keep border crossings and border bridges open after temporary closures of two key rail crossings earlier this month by US authorities, which had been a priority issues for Mexican officials. The US had redeployed agents toward enforcement, sparking a trade slowdown and criticism by Republicans of the Biden administration’s border policies.
López Obrador said: “This agreement has been reached, the rail crossings and the border bridges are already being opened to normalize the situation. Every day there is more movement on the border bridges.”
He has previously pledged to help ease migratory pressures on Mexico’s northern neighbor while also calling on the US to invest more to help the poor in Latin America and the Caribbean “instead of putting up barriers, barbed wire fences in the river, or thinking about building walls”.
On Thursday López Obrador insisted: “The relationship with Biden is very good, and he is very respectful of us, of Mexico,” he said, adding that Biden “understands that this [migration] phenomenon has to do with poverty.”
López Obrador also said that the issue of fentanyl, a powerful and deadly opioid that Mexican cartels have been trafficking into the US, was “hardly discussed” in Wednesday’s meeting.
The talks were “productive”, but the sides had more to do, a US State Department official said on Thursday, adding López Obrador “has taken significant new enforcement actions yet we have a lot more work to do together”.
The delegations, who are set to meet again in Washington next month, also discussed regularizing the situation of beneficiaries of the US Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program – the so-called Dreamers who were brought into the country illegally.
Unauthorized immigration threatens to become a major issue as campaigning for next year’s US presidential election moves into high gear. It’s also creating a crisis for northern state “sanctuary cities” who are pleading with the federal government for economic support to shelter migrant arrivals often bussed or flown up from Texas to Democrat-controlled cities by the state’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott.
On Wednesday, the mayors of Chicago, New York City and Denver renewed pleas for help and coordination. They said buses often arrive at all hours, outside designated drop-off zones, and with no passenger manifests.
“We cannot allow buses with people needing our help to arrive without warning at any hour of day and night,” the New York City mayor, Eric Adams, said at a news conference. “This not only prevents us from providing assistance in an orderly way, it puts those who have already suffered in so much in danger.”
By one measure, more than half a million people, many fleeing crime, poverty and regional conflicts, have crossed the Darién Gap jungle into Central America this year with many said to be heading to the US-Mexico border.
A single caravan of about 7,500 people, that began its journey on Sunday, is currently heading through the Mexican state of Chiapas toward the border. Luis García Villagrán, an organizer of the group, told NBC News that it included people from 24 countries, including Central American states, Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti, Turkey, Iran, Syria and Cameroon.
Images of the column of migrants has renewed pressure on US and Mexican officials to address the issue.
The Texas Republican congressman Tony Gonzales, whose district stretches from San Antonio to El Paso, said this week that immigration was greater than anything border officials have dealt with in the past three years. “We are absolutely at a breaking point, beyond a breaking point,” Gonzales said.
The balancing act between Mexico’s need to keep borders open for trade and the US need to curb illegal immigration is at the center of diplomatic discussions. Mexico’s response has included the bulldozing of a partially abandoned camp at Matamoros across from Brownsville, Texas.
One Honduran man told the Associated Press that about 200 people in the camp that had contained 1,500 were in effect forced to leave. The man, who gave only his first name, José, said authorities “ran us out” and the remaining migrants had been intimidated by the bulldozers. “You had to run for your life to avoid an accident,” he said.
About 70 people later attempted to cross the Rio Grande but became trapped for hours along the riverbank beneath the layers of sharp concertina wire.
