President Biden is dispatching his senior officials to Mexico in the coming days for direct talks on efforts to curb mass migration at the U.S. border, the White House said Thursday.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and White House homeland security adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall will meet with Mexico’s president and his team “to discuss further actions that can be taken together to address current border challenges,” said White House national security spokesperson John Kirby.
The trip by Biden’s top homeland and foreign policy officials follows the president speaking with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Thursday, when the two discussed “ongoing efforts to manage the unprecedented migratory flows in the western hemisphere,” Kirby said.
“The two leaders agreed that additional enforcement actions are urgently needed so that key ports of entry can be reopened across our shared border.”
America’s southern border is facing a crisis, with an estimated 10,000 people making a dangerous crossing illegally into the U.S. every day.
At least three ports of entry in Texas, Arizona and California have reportedly closed to foot and vehicle traffic and on Sunday, Customs and Border Patrol announced it would suspend two railway crossings because of a surge in migrants and that is potentially contributing to hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.
Kirby said Biden and López Obrador shared a concern about the “dramatic” increase in migratory flow.
“They did talk in broad terms about what can be done inside Mexico to slow that process down, and there are some things like checkpoints on rail lines and on highways and that kind of thing,” Kirby continued, adding that there were discussions about using the Mexican Armed Forces.
The visit by Blinken, Mayorkas and Sherwood-Randall is aimed at “what can be done to sort of flesh those modalities out a little bit more.”
“Their visit will really be about getting at the migratory flows and talking to President López Obrador and his team about what more we can do together,” Kirby said, saying the Biden administration is looking to work “in full partnership with Mexican authorities.”
“There’s been terrific cooperation. We’re proud of that. And I think it can be expanded given the record levels of migrants that we’re seeing come across,” he said.
The surge in migrants is a major political contention for Biden, as Democratic lawmakers are negotiating with Republicans on how to institute sweeping immigration policy changes to contend with the crisis. A bipartisan resolution is also the key to the president securing a vote on his national security supplemental, which includes money to help Ukraine in its war against Russia, aid Israel in its war against Hamas, and address U.S. security priorities in the Indo-Pacific.