Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, accompanied by first woman Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller, sends out a symbolical embrace initially of the annual Independence Day parade within the capital’s most important sq., the Zocalo, in Mexico Metropolis, Saturday, Sept. 16, 2023. Credit score: AP/Fernando Llano
MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s high diplomat, Alicia Bárcena, stated Friday that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador desires to journey to Washington D.C. in early November to fulfill with U.S. President Joe Biden about immigration, growth help and drug trafficking.
The assertion comes after a surge in migrants shifting via Mexico compelled the closure of some U.S.-Mexico border crossings and led Mexico’s largest railway firm to halt about 60 prepare runs as a result of so many migrants have been hopping aboard freight automobiles. Most seem like Venezuelans, and plenty of stated that they had crossed via the jungle-clad Darien Hole that connects Colombia and Panama.
Bárcena informed a information convention in New York that migrant shelters in Ciudad Juarez, throughout from El Paso, Texas, are 95% full and that the Mexican authorities is “very anxious” in regards to the border closures and the migrant surge, particularly given Mexico’s rocky relationship with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
Up to now, Abbott has tightened border truck inspections and strung a collection of floating boundaries within the Rio Grande to attempt to deter migrants.
Bárcena recommended that extra must be completed to stem the circulation of migrants via the Darien Hole, and that lifting U.S. financial sanctions towards Venezuela “might additionally assist us return some folks to their dwelling nations.”
There have been indicators that some in Mexico, too, have been getting overwhelmed by the surge in migrants.
Bárcena stated about 140,000 migrants have been ready to register for transit or asylum papers within the southern Mexican metropolis of Tapachula, close to the border with Guatemala, including “we’d like reinforcements, as a result of it’s unimaginable to course of 140,000 folks.”
And early Friday, just a few dozen residents who stay close to an overcrowded migrant shelter in Mexico Metropolis briefly blocked site visitors on one of many metropolis’s most important expressways, saying migrants dwelling within the streets exterior the shelter have been inflicting issues.
Mexico can also be the place a lot of the artificial opioid fentanyl is produced for the U.S. market, utilizing precursor chemical substances smuggled in from China.
Bárcena’s feedback got here only a day after López Obrador introduced he’ll skip the Asia-Pacific Financial Cooperation summit in November in San Francisco as a result of his nation “has no relations” with Peru.
López Obrador beforehand claimed Peru’s present authorities was put in by a coup and that he nonetheless considers ousted president Pedro Castillo to be the nation’s authentic chief.
Each nations recalled their ambassadors following these feedback.
It could not be the primary time that López Obrador has skipped worldwide conferences in the US due to who else was or wasn’t invited. Final 12 months, he skipped the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles as a result of Nicaragua and Venezuela weren’t invited.
