MEXICO CITY: Mexican and US officials agreed to keep border crossings open, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Thursday, following a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that focused on securing Mexico's help to stem record-high migration.
The United States earlier this month temporarily shuttered several crossings, including two key rail bridges, to redeploy enforcement resources elsewhere across the border amid soaring migrant numbers, a pivotal issue in next year's US elections.
"This agreement has been reached, the rail crossings and the boarder bridges are already being opened to normalize the situation," Lopez Obrador told a morning press conference. "Every day there is more movement on the border bridges."
Lopez Obrador said Wednesday's meetings with the U.S. delegation, which included Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, were "direct," and he praised the Biden administration's relationship with Mexico.
"The relationship with Biden is very good, and he is very respectful of us, of Mexico," he said, adding that Biden "understands that migration phenomenon has to do with poverty."
Lopez Obrador earlier this month said he would help the United States by boosting measures to curb migration, without giving details. US and Mexican officials have not released any more information about possible agreements reached during the meeting so far.
The bilateral talks come as hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers, many with small children, slowly walk across southern Mexico. The caravan, which Lopez Obrador has reduced to some 1,500 people, is unlikely to reach the U.S. border.
But it has highlighted the plight of migrants and asylum seekers, who are fleeing violence, conflict, poverty, and climate change. The issue of fentanyl, a powerful and deadly opioid, was "hardly discussed" in the meeting, the president added.
The United States has been pressing Mexico to do more to combat fentanyl trafficking, while Mexico has been pushing for stronger U.S. controls to prevent firearms from the neighboring country from reaching powerful drug cartels.
Last week, Lopez Obrador pledged to help ease migratory pressures on the United States and earlier on Wednesday he urged U.S. lawmakers to invest more to help the poor in Latin America and the Caribbean "instead of putting up barriers, barbed wire fences in the river, or thinking about building walls."
Earlier, thousands of migrants and asylum seekers marched slowly north hoping to reach the U.S. border. — Reuters
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
