U.S. and Mexican officials are due to meet Wednesday in Mexico City to discuss what the White House has described as a dramatic increase in the flow of migrants through the region in recent months.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and White House Homeland Security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall are representing the U.S. side, with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador hosting the talks.
Speaking to reporters Friday, López Obrador said Mexico and the United States would continue to work together, highlighting the need to have migration proceed in an orderly manner and to address the root causes of what makes people leave their homes. He said the phenomenon of migration is not by choice, but by necessity.
Mexico’s foreign ministry said in a statement that Wednesday’s meeting represents an opportunity to reaffirm cooperation on migration matters, including the expansion of legal pathways for migrants.
Mexico agreed in May to take in migrants from countries such as Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba who were turned away from the U.S. border for not following rules providing pathways to asylum or other forms of migration.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 242,418 migrant encounters in November, similar to October and the same period last year, but about 70,000 more than in November 2022.
The U.S. last week briefly closed a pair of rail crossings with Mexico, citing migrants using freight trains to travel to areas near the border and the need to redirect CBP personnel to assist U.S. Border Patrol with taking migrants into custody.
Days ahead of Wednesday’s meeting, a group of migrants estimated at 6,000 people departed from Tapachula, near Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala, marking one of the largest such groups in more than a year.
White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said U.S. President Joe Biden and López Obrador discussed in a phone call what steps could be taken within Mexico to slow the increase in migrants heading for the U.S. border.
Kirby cited rail and highway checkpoints, as well as the presence of the Mexican military in the southern part of the country, and said Wednesday’s meeting will include working on those kinds of actions in further detail.
“A way to get at this is to work with neighboring nations to try to get at these root causes,” Kirby told reporters at a White House briefing Thursday. He added that the U.S., at the same time, could work on its own immigration policies and border security.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters