According to officials from both countries who are acquainted with the negotiations, the Biden administration is placing more and more pressure on Mexico to reduce the unprecedented number of migrants entering the country, while Mexico has its lists of lofty demands for the United States.
Prior attempts by the Biden administration to curb the flood of migrants have only resulted in brief drops in the population. In late December, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas traveled to Mexico to meet with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and request more support. The insiders described such talks as “preliminary,” adding that neither party made any firm guarantees during them.
According to officials from both countries who are acquainted with the negotiations, the Biden administration is placing more and more pressure on Mexico to reduce the unprecedented number of migrants entering the country, while Mexico has its lists of lofty demands for the United States.
Prior attempts by the Biden administration to curb the flood of migrants have only resulted in brief drops in the population. In late December, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas traveled to Mexico to meet with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and request more support. The insiders described such talks as “preliminary,” adding that neither party made any firm guarantees during them.
A senior Biden administration official responded to such demands by telling NBC News that AMLO, as López Obrador is often known, “has a very ambitious agenda.” Congress would have to take action on a few of these issues. We both agree that the area needs to be improved.
Later this month, in Washington, the two nations are anticipated to resume their negotiations. According to representatives from the United States and Mexico, Mexico has substantial negotiating power. Given Donald Trump’s words and deeds while in office, López Obrador’s government would rather see President Joe Biden win reelection in November. However, without further backing from Mexico, Biden is rapidly out of ways to address an issue that is lowering his poll numbers, according to three U.S. officials.
Republicans and Democrats are still at odds over border security measures on Capitol Hill as the talks enter their second month, with little sign of progress. Furthermore, as the record increase shows, the Biden administration’s revised asylum policy from May did not succeed in discouraging migration.
The Biden administration requires Mexico to allow it to reopen the southern border with the United States and accept more non-Mexican immigrants to lower the numbers, as it was able to do up until early 2023.
The Trump and Biden administrations sent refugees back into Mexico without doing an asylum screening during the Covid epidemic by utilizing a public health decree known as Title 42. For three years, during that strategy that ended in May, Mexico welcomed back over a million migrants annually. Though it only accounts for 10% of December’s total, Mexico has pledged to accept back 30,000 migrants every month under the existing policy.
The United States and Mexico’s negotiators also want Mexico to increase border patrol along its southern border with Guatemala and deport more people who are caught there.
One Mexican official told NBC News that Mexico is eager to assist the United States by stepping up enforcement, though no specific figures have been discussed as of yet. Recently, deportation flights from Mexico and the United States to Venezuela, one of the top two nationalities currently attempting to enter the country, were restarted.
NBC News was informed by a senior administration official that despite the low number of flights thus far, both nations anticipate a rise in the number of deportations to Venezuela this year. There were eleven deportation flights from the United States to Venezuela in total in 2023, according to ICE flight records, although currently there is only one scheduled flight each week. Mexico reported that on December 30, it began deporting people to Venezuela.
The officials stated that Mexico expects increased financial assistance for border security in exchange for its cooperation. However according to Mexican authorities, Mexico also wants the United States to act in good faith by funding more initiatives to assist Central and South American nations in escaping poverty to address the underlying reasons of migration. Given that the majority of migrants are headed for the United States, Mexico views itself as a transit nation caught in the crossfire of American issues, according to a senior administration official.
A request for comment was not answered by the López Obrador government.
When Title 42 was in existence, a large number of migrants were driven out of shelters in northern Mexican towns such as Juárez, Tijuana, and Reynosa. There, they were vulnerable to rape, torture, extortion, and kidnapping. Title 42’s legacy and Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which made asylum seekers wait in camps in the country’s north, left Mexico with few resources and a reluctance to accept more migrants than its cities could accommodate.
Following the relaxation of Title 42, migration increased, and by late 2023, the National Institute of Migration, Mexico’s equivalent of the US Border Patrol, was running low on funding.
The authorities stated that discussions regarding fentanyl smuggling, another priority, have been mostly shelved for the time being due to the overwhelming weight of the immigration problem between the United States and Mexico.
