Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala will send more troops to their borders to stop migration to the United States

Members of the National Guard guard the shore of the Suchiate River, on the border between Mexico and Guatemala.Teresa de Miguel

The Administration of President Joe Biden has managed to start a commitment to the governments of Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala to reinforce their borders.

Tyler Moran, an advisor to the president on immigration issues, told the MSNBC television network that executives in the aforementioned countries have agreed to increase the number of security elements to strengthen surveillance at transit points on the route north.

The announcement was confirmed by the White House spokeswoman, Jen Paski, who affirmed that the Administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico has 10,000 uniformed soldiers on its border with Guatemala, 1,200 more than those who were reported on March 22.

Last month recorded the record for illegal crossings into the United States in the last 15 years.

More than 172,300 migrants were detained by immigration agents.

Among them 18,800 minors who arrived alone and who have become the face of the 2021 phenomenon.

Tyler Moran has stated that the agreement will prevent human traffickers, smugglers and cartels from "taking advantage of minors on their way" and that the measures will also "protect" them.

The Government of Mexico, through the Ministry of Foreign Relations, has reacted this afternoon to the announcement of the White House by qualifying the supposed increase in troops.

"Mexico will maintain the existing deployment of federal forces in its border area, with the aim of enforcing its own immigration legislation," the statement said.

The López Obrador Administration "maintains that economic and social development is the only substantive solution to the migratory phenomenon," adds the authorities' text.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who was commissioned by Biden to deal with the situation at the border, held a call with President López Obrador on Wednesday.

Both agreed to work together to "counteract human smuggling and human trafficking."

Harris also communicated to the Mexican president the efforts "aimed at increasing humanitarian assistance", a greater investment, which is destined to the countries of the Northern Triangle of Central America, which have high levels of poverty and insecurity as the main drivers of expulsion.

During March, Mexico increased the number of raids and operations to reduce the illegal trafficking of people, but these have not yielded the expected results due to the restrictions imposed by the pandemic and the limited conditions of the detention centers in the North American country.

Things seem to change in April thanks to pressure from the US authorities on neighbors.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Monday that the increase in the number of elements of the Mexican National Guard on the border with Guatemala has doubled the daily number of arrests in the area.

This weekend, for example, the authorities of the Migration Institute rescued 136 people from a safe house in the state of Tlaxcala, central Mexico, where there were 68 people from family nuclei and 19 children alone.

Immigration agents also claim that they have increased the migration of family units, that is, one or two parents who undertake the route north with a child.

According to the statistics released on April 9, 52,900 people detained at the border belonged to this number compared to 19,200 registered in February.

New appointments

While trying to control the situation at the border, the Biden Administration has submitted six new appointments to transform the immigration control system.

The White House confirmed this morning that the US president has proposed among them two great critics of Donald Trump's immigration policy in key positions in the Department of Homeland Security.

These officials must be confirmed by Congress.

Chris Magnus, the Tucson, Arizona police chief since 2016, will be nominated for the commissioner position of Customs and Border Protection.

The CBP, for its acronym in English, is the great surveillance apparatus in the more than 3,000 kilometers of border thanks to the border patrol.

Magnus, married to a man for 15 years and the son of a Norwegian immigrant, has a long history in the police force since he entered the Lansig (Michigan) force.

Later he was chief of police in Fargo (North Dakota), Richmond (California) and in Tucson, near Mexico.

Educated at Harvard, his management has been known for seeking a more progressive vision and less aggressive training for agents, who focus on building relationships with neighbors and training to de-escalate tension.

Another daughter of immigrants will be in charge of Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS for its acronym in English). Ur Mendoza Jaddou, of a Mexican mother and an Iraqi father, grew up in Chula Vista, California, very close to the Mexican border. Jaddou, a lawyer from Stanford and the University of California, has been in charge of a mechanism since 2018 that monitors and qualifies the immigration policies of the Federal Administration. Before that, she was an advisor to the Department of Homeland Security during the presidency of Barack Obama. Among the appointments also stands out Colonel John Tien, who was a security adviser specialized in the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan with the former Democratic president.