the head of American diplomacy visiting Mexico to try to stem the crisis

While illegal crossings of the American border are at peaks, a new caravan of migrants and demonstrators has formed in Mexico.

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The head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, during a press conference in Washington DC, December 20, 2023. (ROBERTO SCHMIDT / AFP)

The head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, is traveling to Mexico on Wednesday, December 27, to try to find solutions to a new influx of migrants at the border, the subject of a burning political debate in the United States.

This trip during the holidays, a rare occurrence for an American administration executive, comes as Republican elected officials in Congress are demanding an agreement on immigration with the government of Joe Biden, in exchange for their support for a new package of help for Ukraine.

In recent weeks, some 10,000 people per day have tried to enter the United States illegally through the southern border, almost double the numbers recorded before the pandemic.

They are fleeing poverty or gang violence

On Sunday, a caravan of several thousand migrants left southern Mexico to try to reach the United States. On Wednesday, the long procession was located about 1,600 kilometers from the US border, according to the New York Times. Dbehind a banner on which it is written “Exodus from poverty”, iIt is notably made up of single people and families coming from Honduras, El Salvador, Venezuela and Haiti, specifies the American newspaper.

Many of these migrants say they wanted to escape poverty. Others have fled the violence in their countries of origin, often after threats from gangs and criminal networks, as reported by the BBC, in particular.


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