(Washington) High-level US officials will soon visit Mexico to discuss immigration between the two countries, the White House said on Friday, following a telephone call between President Joe Biden and his Mexican counterpart Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador .
The two leaders discussed on Thursday their actions aimed at “managing unprecedented migratory flows” on the American continent, at a time when local American authorities, in Texas and Arizona, themselves took unprecedented measures at the border, in place of the federal government whose inaction they criticize.
“President Biden has asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and White House Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall to travel to Mexico City in the coming days to meet with the President Lopez Obrador and his team to talk about steps that can be taken together to address the current challenges at the border,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
He spoke of a “massive increase” in border crossings.
Border police have reported in recent weeks some 10,000 crossings every day, and already more than 2.8 million interceptions of migrants by land in 2023, more than for the entire previous year, a new record .
On the phone, the two presidents “shared their concern about the increase in migratory flows in recent weeks” and discussed “what could be done in Mexico to slow down this process,” Mr. Kirby added.
The sending of this delegation also comes at a time when parliamentarians are discussing an agreement on immigration in Washington, a condition requested by the Republicans to give their agreement to a new financial envelope to help Ukraine in its war against the Russia.