US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken is set to visit Mexico City Wednesday to discuss the recent surge in illegal immigration as a migrant caravan said to number thousands of people inches toward the border.
Blinken, 61, will meet with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador alongside Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and White House homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall.
Ahead of the meeting, Homeland Security officials have debated ways Mexico can help lower the numbers at the US’ southern border — including controlling the railways that migrants use to travel north, moving migrants south, and providing incentives to not journey to the border, CNN reported.
The gathering comes as President Biden has faced increased pressure from both Republicans and his own party over the crisis at the US-Mexico border.
Earlier this month, the White House failed to clinch billions of dollars in aid for Ukraine, Israel and the border when leaders became unable to reach a consensus over border policy changes, CNN reported
Blinken’s trip to Mexico also coincides with the movement of a massive migrant caravan — the largest in over a year — making its way north.
At least 8,000 asylum seekers — mostly from Cuba, Haiti and Honduras — set off for the US on Sunday.
The numbers may swell to 15,000 people, migrant rights activist Luis Garcia Villagran cautioned.
There have also been more than 730,000 migrant encounters at the southern border since Oct. 1, US Customs and Border Patrol sources said.
There have also been days in December alone when Border Patrol met over 10,000 people at the border, the New York Times reported.
Last week, Biden called López Obrador to discuss the worsening situation at the border, CNN said.
The two leaders came away from the call agreeing that additional enforcement was “urgently needed” so that key ports of entry that were previously shut could be reopened, the outlet explained.
The US typically relies on Mexico to reduce the numbers of southern migrants, but “the Mexicans still have a relatively limited capacity,” former US Ambassador to Mexico Earl Anthony Wayne told CNN.
“Their immigration force is underfunded and small. Also, they use the National Guard occasionally to stop people but that’s only good for stopping people for short periods of time and hasn’t seemed to hold up very well. And you still have networks of smugglers,” he explained.
