Biden sends delegation to negotiate additional immigration measures

A high-level delegation representing the President of the United States, Joe Biden, will travel to Mexico on Wednesday. urgently negotiate with the Mexican presidentAndrés Manuel López Obrador, new immigration measures that stop crossing the border.

The delegation will be led by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, accompanied by Secretary of Homeland Security and the person in charge of US immigration policy, Alejandro Mayorkas, and White House Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall.

He organized this tripThe two leaders last Thursday when Biden called López Obrador concerned about the size of the immigration crisis, causing the United States to close several border ports for several days.

The State Department said in a statement that a delegation led by Blinken would meet face-to-face with López Obrador to address “unprecedented irregular migration” in the region and seek the adoption of “measures” that allow all border ports to reopen.

In addition, the head of American diplomacy will insist on compliance with the Declaration from Los Angeles, by which twenty Latin American countries, including Mexico, undertook to provide legal means of residence for migrants so that not all of them go to the US.

For its part, the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statementIt was López Obrador who invited the American delegation to visit Mexico “in order to dialogue on human mobility”.

For the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the meeting is an opportunity for cooperation in the “orderly management of migration flows” and insisting on the need for border crossings to remain open in order to avoid impacts on trade.

Additionally, López Obrador will emphasize the need to address the root causes of forced migration, such as poverty in Central America.

The United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detained 242,000 migrants at the border with Mexico in November and revealed a historic spike in undocumented arrivals in the first days of December.

Last week, the United States closed the railroad crossings Eagle Pass (Texas) with Piedras Negras (Coahuila) and El Paso (Texas) with Ciudad Juárez (Chihuahua) for five days.

CBP justified the move because it had to redeploy its personnel to those migrant processing points, while Mexican employers reported millions in losses in bilateral trade.

In recent days, the US has also closed crossings for vehicles and people in Lukesville (Arizona) and San Ysidro (California).

At the same time, the Democratic administration is negotiating with Republicans on new restrictive measures at the border in order for conservatives to lift their veto in Congress on sending aid to Ukraine.

In this sense, the White House is evaluating the possibility of returning the controversial title 42. a policy implemented by former President Donald Trump during the covid-19 pandemic, which allowed the rapid deportation of undocumented immigrants without giving them the opportunity to seek asylum.

The implementation of this measure would directly affect Mexico since most people return to that country.

The Biden administration repealed Title 42 in May and replaced it with other measures that tried to limit people’s arrival at the border and limit access to asylum.

However, it has not achieved the desired effect, amid a global increase in the movement of people, motivated by the search for better economic opportunities in the US and the escape from various social and political crises in America and other places in the world.

Ahead of the US delegation’s visit, a caravan of more than 10,000 migrants left Mexico’s southern border for the United States on Christmas Eve.