US President Joe Biden arrived early this morning for a two-day official visit to neighboring Mexico, where he is expected to meet with his local counterpart Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as part of the "North American Leaders Summit", also known as " The Summit of the Three Amigos".
The Air Force 1 presidential plane landed early in the morning (Israel time) in Zompango, where Biden was received by an honor guard and the Mexican president.
Biden is going to meet with Obrador in the coming hours for a private conversation where they will discuss, among other things, the economic cooperation and the war against drugs of the two countries.
Parade of honor in honor of Biden at the airport in Mexico City, photo: AP
The US is dealing with a huge influx of immigrants from Mexico, whose number has soared in the past year and reached a record of 2.2 million people trying to cross the border into US territory - the highest rate since 1960. Along with immigrants, the US is fighting cross-border smuggling of drugs, mainly deadly opioids In doing so, the president is also trying to push Congress to enact new laws to fix what he calls a "broken" immigration system.
On the eve of his trip, the president noted on Twitter that it is necessary to "expand legal routes for orderly immigration", and added: "We can do this while limiting illegal immigration."
Deadly operation
Biden's visit to Mexico was held in the shadow of a particularly deadly and complex military operation last week that resulted in the capture of Ovidio Guzman-Lopez, the youngest son of drug lord and former Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
During the riots, ten soldiers and about 20 gunmen from the Sinaloa drug cartel were killed.
Now the Mexican authorities fear that the capture of Guzmán-Lopez will exacerbate the war between the drug cartels.
Mexican immigrants during an attempt to cross the border to El Paso, photo: AFP
Earlier, Biden made a quick visit to the border city of El Paso in Texas - his first tour along the southern border since taking office about two years ago.
On this visit, he visited the county's Immigrant Services Center and promised resources to strengthen law enforcement in the area in their war on the phenomenon of illegal infiltrators.
"They need a lot of resources and we will bring them," he said in a conversation with reporters.
The governor of Texas, Republican Greg Abbott, who was present at the president's visit, said that "he came two years late".
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