Blinken praises the “progress” with Mexico to control irregular immigration

For the second time in three weeks, those responsible for immigration policy in the United States and Mexico have met again to discuss border control.

This Friday, in Washington, took place in very different circumstances than that of December 28 in the Mexican capital, when the United States registered up to 10,000 irregular daily entries of migrants.

Now, with the numbers much smaller, the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has hailed the “great progress” since that meeting and the milestone that the inauguration in Guatemala of the social democrat Bernardo Arévalo represents for migration collaboration.

On a day in which the American capital was almost deserted due to the second heavy snowfall in just three days, after two years without falling snowflakes, the State Department served as a meeting place for the delegations.

On the Mexican side, Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena and those responsible for Security, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, attended;

of Defense, Luis Cresencio Sandoval;

from Marina, Rafael Ojeda;

and from the National Migration Institute, Francisco Garduño.

On the US side, in addition to Blinken, the Secretary of National Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, and the Internal Security Advisor, Liz Sherwood-Randall, participated.

“I think we have made great progress in the space of three weeks since our (previous) meeting.

And we look forward to reviewing them today, as well as examining additional steps we can take together to advance the shared goal of reducing an unprecedented flow of irregular migration,” said the head of US diplomacy.

Among these progress, Blinken cited Arévalo's inauguration, which “opens up an important new area of ​​security cooperation between our three countries.

“We will continue to collaborate more broadly to develop regional solutions to this historic challenge we face.”

For his part, Bárcena stressed that “we, as Mexico, intend to help support this great task, this great battle that we are all seeing, which is high human mobility.

It is not only a problem of our region: the entire world is going through a crisis of this type.”

The chancellor insisted, at the same time, on also addressing the causes that lead millions of people to leave their homelands to try to start a new life away from their home of origin.

“We are, I believe, very ready to address the structural causes of migration, the factors that contribute to irregular migration and, above all, how we work together to address this issue for the benefit of the people,” declared the head of Mexican diplomacy. .

The meeting came while Republicans and Democrats in the US Congress are trying to agree on immigration reform that tightens border control and the conditions for requesting asylum.

The Republicans, especially their hard wing, condition the approval of measures in this regard to give the green light to military and economic aid to Ukraine, one of the great foreign policy priorities of President Joe Biden's Administration.

Although it is sometimes difficult to perceive the changes that these types of meetings cause, the border communities registered one immediately after the meeting.

On January 2, just four days after the meeting, operations resumed at four major crossings: Eagle Pass, Texas;

San Ysidro, in California;

Lukeville, in Arizona and the Morley pedestrian zone, in the same State.

The Office of Customs Control and Border Protection (CBP) closed the aforementioned checkpoints after registering a sharp increase in the number of irregular crossings made by migrants.

The agents stationed at these points had to abandon their daily duties to join in the processing of those crossing from Mexico.

Despite this, the number of officials was insufficient for the number of immigrants arriving.

Many of the new arrivals slept outdoors near international bridges and the wall.

Preliminary figures from last month indicate that immigration agents detained at least 225,000 migrants at the border with Mexico.

The figure broke the previous monthly maximum, also documented during the Biden Administration, in May 2022 with 224,000 arrests made.

In the days before Christmas, CBP agents processed up to 10,000 immigrants a day.

A new caravan originating in Central America threatened to worsen the situation at the border, but it dissolved days later.

The flow began to slow toward the end of the year, but U.S. officials fear it will increase again in the coming weeks.

In mid-December, López Obrador acknowledged that the number of crossings from his country to the United States had increased by 30% between November and December.

Days later, the Mexican president announced that he would discuss the issue in a phone call with Biden, who seeks to prevent the crisis on the border from growing in the election year.

62% of Americans reject the Democratic president's management of the immigration issue, according to the average of Real Clear Politics polls.

Biden has tried to relieve the border by authorizing a series of humanitarian permits that favor migrants from Nicaragua, Haiti, Cuba and Venezuela.

The US authorities allow the entry of up to 30,000 nationals from these countries, who must complete the process through a mobile application and without beginning the journey north.

The United States Government has also set up offices in Colombia, Guatemala and Costa Rica, where those interested in starting the trip to the United States can begin their processes and thus reduce the intense wave that has reached the border with Mexico in recent weeks.

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