U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas are meeting with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico City this week for what the Wall Street Journal describes as "Urgent talks to slow the record pace of illegal crossings at the U.S. southern border".
I certainly appreciate the sense of urgency, but Blinken and Mayorkas are a couple of years late in this effort, suggesting that politics, not border security, is what's really motivating the Biden administration.
Mexico will take unprecedented steps to increase enforcement to curb irregular migration, to include the deployment of its National Guard throughout Mexico, giving priority to its southern border.
The number of illegal entrants apprehended by Border Patrol at the Southwest border who were OTMs-and also not from the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras-increased nearly twelvefold, from just over 85,000 in FY 2019 to 1.019 million in FY 2023.
In January 2023, President Biden went to Mexico City for trilateral talks with AMLO and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and AMLO praised Biden for being "The first president of the United States in a very long time that has not built even one meter of wall".
In Washington, the border crisis has become a major obstacle for continued U.S. military support for Ukraine, a priority of President Biden.
If you're wondering why the U.S. secretary of State and DHS secretary are in Mexico City two days after Christmas, begging the Mexican president for assistance, look no further than the ongoing border negotiations in the Senate, the latest immigration polling, and the internecine Democratic battles playing out on the pages of the New York Times.
https://cis.org/Arthur/Blinken-Mayorkas-Meet-Mexican-President-Border-Issues
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