President Joe Biden travels to the United States-Mexico border on Sunday, the first leg of a three-day trip to Mexico City, focusing on migration issues and drug trafficking.
The US leader, accused by the Republican opposition of turning a blind eye to historic flows of migrants trying to enter the country illegally, stops in El Paso, Texas, to try to tackle a weak point of its balance sheet.
He will discuss “border control operations” and meet local elected officials and activists. Before flying to the Mexican capital for a summit with his Mexican counterpart Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“Regional Solution”
Joe Biden spoke on Twitter on Saturday of the need to “develop legal channels” for immigration, “while limiting illegal immigration”.
The American president will be accompanied at the border by his Minister of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, who called on ABC on Sunday for a “regional solution” to the migration crisis.
The White House had already announced measures on Thursday to try to relieve the border, where more than 230,000 arrests were still recorded in November.
Up to 30,000 migrants will be allowed to enter the United States each month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, but they will have to arrive by air so as not to add to the workload of border guards on the ground. .
On the other hand, those who cross the border illegally will be more easily turned back, according to the American executive.
Fentanyl
Joe Biden’s trip to Mexico will also be marked by the tragedy of fentanyl, a synthetic drug 50 times more potent than heroin, whose production and trafficking are controlled by Mexican cartels with chemical precursors coming from China, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Almost two-thirds of the 108,000 overdose deaths recorded in the United States in 2021 involved synthetic opioids. And the amount of fentanyl seized in 2022 alone is more than would be needed to kill the entire US population, according to the DEA.
Ahead of Biden’s arrival, Mexico on Thursday captured Ovidio Guzman, one of the biggest meth traffickers, in an operation that left 10 law enforcement officers dead and 19 among members of the Sinaloa gang.
“When there are these kinds of meetings, one constant is that the Mexican authorities always have something to offer, sooner or later,” said security expert Ricardo Marquez, according to whom this arrest does not affect the structure of the Sinaloa Cartel, whose networks span 50 countries.
However, the United States and Mexico announced in 2021 a change of approach in their anti-drug policy, focusing on the causes of trafficking after 15 years of purely military strategy.
Some 340,000 people have died violent deaths in Mexico since the military deployed in 2006 to fight drug cartels.
In the midst of this bloodbath, the Mexican government has filed two lawsuits against the arms industry in the United States, which it accuses of fueling the violence of drug traffickers on its territory.
Climate change will also be on the agenda, with both countries announcing at COP 27 a $48 billion renewable energy investment project in which Mexico has pledged to step up its emissions reduction efforts. of greenhouse gases.
The need to develop supply chains for electronic components in order to reduce Washington’s dependence on Asia will also be at the heart of the exchanges.