That was one of the points agreed upon in the meeting that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador held the day before with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, said a joint statement from both governments that was released on Thursday.
The meeting coincided with the dismantling by Mexican authorities of a precarious camp of tents abandoned by migrants located along the Rio Grande in the border town of Matamoros, an event that could probably be a sign of the actions that are coming from the side. of Mexico to attend to the growing number of migrants arriving at the southern border of the United States.
Mexico without option
The temporary closure of two border rail crossings in Texas has been a clear message that the United States needs Mexico to do more to prevent migrants from boarding freight trains, buses and trucks to reach the border.
Faced with the desperation that these crossings will be opened for the transfer of its merchandise, Mexico is beginning to show signs that it will begin to collaborate in migratory efforts.
What happened in Matamoros was a clear example, while Blinken met with López Obrador in the Mexican capital.
The meeting took place after a phone call that Biden made on December 20 to his Mexican counterpart to express his government’s concern about the growing flow of migrants on the southern border of the United States, where up to 12,000 illegal crossings a day were detected. López Obrador reported on Thursday.
The immigration situation has become a headache for Biden months before the presidential elections. As a result of that call, they both decided to look for a solution together.
Migrants settled on the riverbank opposite Brownsville, Texas, in late 2022 and the camp once housed up to 1,500 migrants, but many tents were vacated in recent months as migrants forded the river to reach the United States. .
Segismundo Doguín, head of the National Migration Institute in Tamaulipas – the state where Matamoros is located – denied that it was an eviction. “What we are doing is that the tent that we see is empty, the tent that we are removing… well, the migrants are already starting to leave,” he stated.
But a Honduran migrant who only wanted to give his first name, José, said some of the 200 remaining migrants had been virtually forced to leave the camp late Tuesday.
“They chased us all away,” he said. As he explained, they were given very little notice to move their tents and belongings out of the way and felt intimidated by the bulldozer moving between the tents. The migrants, he added, “had to run for their lives, because if not, an accident could happen.”
Saturated shelters
Some of the migrants moved to a fenced area of the camp assigned by immigration agents, but that did not take away their fear.
About 70 migrants jumped into the river on Tuesday night and crossed into the United States. They were trapped for hours along the banks, under rows of barbed wire that were installed by order of the governor of Texas.
Migrants who have been forced to leave the camp have few options, said Glady Cañas, founder of the Matamoros-based nongovernmental organization Helping Them Triunfar.
“Well, the truth is that the shelters are saturated,” he said.
Cañas was at the camp on Wednesday, where he walked among the tents and encouraged migrants to avoid crossing illegally into the United States, especially after several people drowned in recent days.
closed crossings
Mexican industries were affected last week by the temporary closure of two railroad crossings with Texas, carried out on the grounds that Border Patrol agents had to be reassigned to deal with the high number of immigration crossings.
Another border crossing remained closed in Lukeville, Arizona, and operations were partially suspended in San Diego and Nogales, also in Arizona.
López Obrador indicated on Thursday in his morning conference that the delegates of both governments committed to holding regular meetings to promote orderly migration and to strengthen cooperation to address the economic-social causes that lead thousands of people to leave their homes.
As part of the cooperation policies, both governments committed to intensify efforts to “interrupt human trafficking, trafficking and criminal networks,” the joint statement said.
“We have to be vigilant so that the crossings are not closed,” said the Mexican president when reaffirming the government’s priority for the United States to reopen border crossings. “Now more than ever, a good neighborly policy with the United States is essential,” he added.
For his part, Blinken also praised the results of the meeting that took place on Wednesday in the Mexican capital and said in a message on his X account, formerly Twitter, that Washington was committed to Mexico to address various challenges, including the management of the irregular migration, the reopening of border crossings and the fight against fentanyl and other synthetic drugs.
Blinken was accompanied by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and White House National Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall.
Increase in agents
Mexico has already assigned more than 32,000 Armed Forces and National Guard agents — about 11% of its forces — to enforce immigration laws.
But the deficiencies of this measure were revealed on Tuesday, when elements of the National Guard made no attempt to stop a caravan made up of around 6,000 migrants, most of them from Central America and Venezuela, when they passed in front of the main point immigration inspection in the state of Chiapas, near the border with Guatemala.
López Obrador minimized the caravan on Thursday and assured that it has already been reduced to about 1,582 people after some migrants decided to separate from the group. But activist Luis García, coordinator of the local organization Center for Human Dignification that guides the group, denied that information and indicated that some 7,000 people are still marching, of which about half are minors.
Mexico has previously allowed these types of caravans to advance, trusting that they will get tired of walking along the highway.
But letting them get tired — forcing Venezuelans and other migrants to walk through the dangerous jungle of the Darien Gap in Panama, or taking migrants off passenger buses in Mexico — is no longer working.
Conditional help?
The number of migrants boarding freight trains to cross Mexico has been such that one of the country’s two main railway companies was forced to suspend services in September for safety reasons.
The closures of railroad crossings in Texas interrupt shipments going from Mexico to the United States, as well as the transfer of grains needed in Mexico to feed livestock.
López Obrador has said he is willing to help, but wants the United States to send more development aid to the migrants’ countries of origin, reduce or eliminate sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela and start a dialogue with the government in Havana.
Source: With information from AP
