By AP
The presidents of the United States and Mexico held a telephone conversation on Saturday to discuss migration issues, just when Joe Biden's immigration policy is under scrutiny in the middle of the election year and after press reports about an investigation into alleged donations from the drug traffickers to Andrés Manuel López Obrador's 2006 campaign will outrage the Mexican.
The call, which both governments described as productive in separate statements,
took place two days after López Obrador asked the United States to apologize for "the unfounded accusations"
of an investigation by the US anti-drug agency, the DEA, closed in 2010 and now reported by ProPublica and other media.
The president of Mexico, a country that is also holding presidential elections this year, suggested that bilateral cooperation on key issues could be affected if such apologies did not arrive and that Biden himself should be informed of what happened.
“How are we going to be sitting at the table talking about the fight against drugs, if they, or an institution of theirs, is leaking information and harming not me, but what I represent?” López Obrador said on Thursday.
“How are we going to talk about migration, how are we going to be talking about the fight against drugs or fentanyl?”
[“Drug addiction in the US cannot be solved by bombing Mexico”: researchers criticize Republican proposals]
Neither of the two governments mentioned anything related to this issue in their press releases, although Mexico said that “the talk was very beneficial, of mutual interest, inspired by the principle of the policy of good neighborliness, friendship and cooperation.”
AMLO and Biden during the APEC summit, on November 17, 2023, in San Francisco. Evan Vucci / AP
In its statement, the White House thanked "Mexico's operational support and for the adoption of concrete measures to deter irregular migration" and said that the two leaders committed to strengthening "joint efforts to combat transnational criminal organizations involved in trafficking." illicit drugs, weapons and people” as well as their bilateral cooperation.
The Mexican statement was not so accommodating and recalled that any law that the United States may pass that "ignores the causes of the migration phenomenon is condemned to become a dead letter."
He reiterated that his bet is that $20 billion be allocated to the countries of origin of the migrants and that the United States lift sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba, two countries from which a growing number of asylum seekers leave.
In addition, Mexico requested the regularization of Mexicans “who have been living and working honestly in the United States for more than five years.”
[DeSantis is committed to attacking Mexican cartels with drones and using “lethal force” with migrants suspected of being drug traffickers]
In the United States, now that the 2024 presidential campaign seems to be shaping up to a probable rematch between Biden and former President Donald Trump, immigration has come to the fore as one of the biggest potential burdens for the head of the White House.
Biden, who is not only under pressure from Republicans but also from Democrats in cities where asylum seekers are arriving in record numbers, is trying to neutralize this burden and that is why he has already accepted a broad bipartisan measure that is still being negotiated in the Senate and that would expand its authority to impose new limitations on border crossings.
But the application of any measure requires Mexico's cooperation.
And in Saturday's statement, the Mexican Government recalled that its government's proposal also includes
“not choosing to build walls or close the border, because it does not solve the causes of migration or resolve the problem.
“It is pure political-electoral propaganda.”
The two governments plan to hold various high-level meetings to continue discussing the immigration issue.