WASHINGTON — A trio of top U.S. officials will soon visit Mexico to discuss fresh actions to crack down on illegal migration, as a spike in crossings at the southwest border has raised pressure on President Joe Biden to take action.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and White House homeland security adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall will hold talks with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and his team in the “coming days,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Thursday.
The visit will come on the heels of a Thursday call during which Biden and Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, “agreed that additional enforcement actions are urgently needed so that key ports of entry can be reopened,” Kirby said. Biden’s advisers will “discuss further actions that can be taken together to address current border challenges,” he added.
Kirby declined to specify timing for the trip.
U.S. border agents have had historic numbers of encounters with migrants in recent weeks, further straining an overburdened immigration system, as well as social services in cities nationwide. Agents logged a record-setting 2.47 million migrant encounters at the US-Mexico border in fiscal year 2023, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.
The agency this week shut down rail crossings at El Paso and Eagle Pass, Texas, due to concerns about smuggling and migration. Railroads urged CBP to reopen the crossings, saying thousands of freight cars were being delayed.
Biden has faced growing criticism from Republicans, as well as some Democrats, that he has not done enough to stem the flow of migrants. The issue has become one of his top vulnerabilities in his run for reelection, polls show.
“The White House’s insistence that ‘the President has done everything that he can on his own’ to secure the border is an insult to the American people,” Raj Shah, a spokesman for House Speaker Mike Johnson, said in a statement.
Johnson sent a letter to Biden earlier Thursday urging him to take further executive action to secure the border.
The trip signals that the administration’s sense of urgency to address the issue has increased. Bipartisan Senate talks on immigration policy changes didn’t yield a deal before lawmakers broke for the holidays, meaning congressional action won’t come until the new year, if at all.
Biden and AMLO during their Thursday call “shared a similar concern about the increase” in border crossings, Kirby said. They also talked about addressing “root causes” such as crime and poverty in Latin America that are driving people to journey to the U.S.
The two leaders discussed measures that Mexico could take to slow down the northward movement of migrants, including increasing the number of checkpoints on highways and rail lines as well as the number of Mexican troops in the country’s south to intercept people traveling from Central and South America.
Blinken, Mayorkas and Sherwood-Randall will hold discussions with Mexican officials “to see what can be done to sort out” those proposals and others, according to Kirby. The top diplomat and Homeland Security chief are returning to Mexico after an October visit aimed at cracking down on migration, crime and drug smuggling.
Jordan Fabian and Josh Wingrove, Bloomberg News©2023 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
