WASHINGTON: Secretary of State Antony Blinken travelled to Mexico on Wednesday in hopes of tackling surging migration, which has become a major political headache for US President Joe Biden as he enters an election year.
The unusual Christmas week trip by the top American diplomat was abruptly scheduled as the rival Republican Party presses Biden to crack down on migration as a condition for providing the votes in Congress for one of his key priorities — support for Ukraine.
Around 10,000 people without authorization are trying to cross the southern US border each day, nearly double the number before the pandemic, with a new caravan of hundreds if not thousands of people leaving by foot from southern Mexico on Sunday.
US border authorities have been so overwhelmed that they have suspended several legal crossings to focus on processing migrants.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador discussed migration in a telephone call Thursday with Biden, who agreed to send Blinken and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, along with White House migration official Liz Sherwood-Randall.
Lopez Obrador told reporters Friday that Mexico would “reinforce our plans” to deal with US-bound migrants — few of whom are Mexicans — after his government said it also was at the breaking point on enforcement. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the US delegation would speak to Lopez Obrador on the “urgent need for lawful pathways and additional enforcement actions” on migration. Mexico, under agreements with both Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump, has agreed at least temporarily to take in migrants seeking to cross into the United States.
Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to challenge Biden next November, is again campaigning on stridently anti-immigrant rhetoric, accusing foreigners of “poisoning the blood of our country,” language that critics pointed out was similar to that of Adolf Hitler.
The package proposed by Biden to Congress would also fund 1,300 additional Border Patrol agents to help address migration.
The Biden administration has warned that without a deal, Ukraine will soon run out of weapons needed to repel the nearly two-year-old Russian invasion.
Andrew Rudman, director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, expected Blinken to seek additional support from Mexico to keep migrants within its borders, such as temporary work permits.
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