Secretary Blinken, on Irregular Immigration: “Don't make that trip. Our border is closed "

The Secretary of State of the United States, Antony Blinken, this Friday in Washington during a videoconference with Mexican authorities.MANUEL BALCE CENETA / AFP

The Joe Biden Administration has marked a turn in the immigration policy of the United States after four years of cutting legal entries and a speech bordering on xenophobic for the irregular, but Washington has stressed that changes take time and, above all , that the change of government in Washington does not translate into an open-door policy towards the south.

The Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, issued a clear and meridian warning this Friday regarding people fleeing poverty and misery in Central America: “To anyone who is thinking of making that trip, our message is: don't do it.

We are strictly enforcing new immigration laws and our border security measures.

The border is closed for irregular immigration ”.

Blinken, a veteran of the Obama and Clinton administrations, made this statement in the framework of a series of videoconferences scheduled for this Friday with different Mexican authorities, in what the State Department has described as a "virtual trip" to Mexico and Canada, the two great North American neighbors and trading partners of the United States.

With that of the south, it shares a border of more than 3,000 kilometers in which around 15 million people live and that in the era of Donald Trump became a battlefield.

The new tenant of the White House has promised to reform the immigration system and has already taken some immediate measures, such as the dismantling of a program that the Republican launched and for which he sent asylum seekers who arrived by the South.

This week, a group of 27 people who lived in a refugee camp in Matamoros (Tamaulipas) was relocated to Brownsville (Texas) to continue with their legal process.

Biden has also ordered this week to resume the issuance of permanent residence cards (colloquially known as

green cards

) that Trump suspended during the pandemic and, in the long term, he has presented in Congress a reform proposal that includes regularization of the 11 million undocumented foreigners estimated to live in the United States.

"The president is committed to reforming our immigration system and ensuring safe, orderly, and humane processing," Blinken said Friday, but those changes, he continued, "require time and the United States will work closely with Mexico to enforce the rule of law, improve security and hold criminals to account ”.

Biden's new strategy regarding immigration from the region, highlighted the senior US official, consists of working with the Governments of Mexico and Central America to solve “the heartbreaking reasons why there are people risking their lives and their security to enter the United States. United at any cost ”.

"It is dangerous for them and it is against our laws," he added, after which he warned anyone "who thinks about making that trip": "Don't do it."

The new head of US diplomacy met by videoconference with the Mexican Foreign Minister, Marcelo Ebrard, with the Mexican Secretary of Economy, Tatiana Clouthier, and with different border authorities, such as the mayor of El Paso, Oscar Leeser, or that of Ciudad Juárez, Héctor Armando Alvídrez, among others.

“Welcome to Mexico,” said Ebrard, at the start of Blinken's “virtual tour”.

The pandemic gave a remote, telematic and to some extent surreal tone to the encounter.

The secretary of state, for example, was part of a

virtual

tour

of an immigration checkpoint on the border between El Paso (Texas) and Ciudad Juárez (Chihuahua).

As Blinken logged on from his computer, in front of what looked like a computer-generated background of an office, a border patrol official announced that she would "take him outside" to begin the tour.

"Come on!" Said the official, while the camera showed the vehicle crossings, the wall that divides both countries, the bridges that thousands of people cross every day to go to work and study.

It was a virtual postcard of the busiest border in the world that inevitably fell short in portraying the contrasts, migratory flows, the uncertainty of asylum seekers and the immense lines that form during the busiest hours.

One of the novelties was that Blinken's agenda included a meeting with Clouthier, who took over as Economy Minister last December, a month before the presidential replacement in the US The main topic was the recently renegotiated free trade agreement of North America (TMEC) and the “areas of opportunity” for both countries after the agreement, which came into force in July and was one of Donald Trump's strengths in the bilateral relationship.

Democrats are expected to give more weight to what is stipulated in the treaty on the application of labor reform in Mexico, the second largest trading partner of the United States, and to issues that had been relegated such as caring for the environment.

Following the talks, the Mexican government, which faces criticism for curbing renewables, pledged to comply with its international greenhouse gas reduction obligations.

"I appreciate your virtual visit to chat and exchange points of view to deepen the productive integration and strengthen the competitiveness of the region," Clouthier wrote after the meeting on his Twitter account.

"The bilateral agenda includes important issues for both countries that will make it possible to strengthen the relationship in terms of development in the south of the country and the working conditions on both sides of the border," said the Mexican Foreign Ministry, which urges Washington to support its development plan to Central America to counteract the triggers of migration in the long term.

Security, a thornier area, was further relegated than migration on the common agenda that was discussed, although the issue of arms trafficking was followed up, an issue that Mexico has put on the table in the last two years.

After weeks of friction over the exoneration of General Salvador Cienfuegos, the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador has lowered its tone and celebrated the new approach to migration that the White House promises, a terrain in which both countries feel they can sit down. negotiate to lay the foundations for a new chapter in the bilateral relationship.

"I wanted to 'visit' Mexico in the first place to demonstrate the importance that President Biden places on the relationship between our countries," said Blinken, "it's hard to think of a more important relationship."

After the first contacts, however, the message between the lines of both countries is the insistence that changes will take time.