President Joe Biden made a politically charged stop at the southern US border Sunday before flying to a Mexico City summit set to be dominated by a growing regional illegal immigration and drug smuggling crisis.
Biden is meeting Monday and Tuesday with his Mexican and Canadian counterparts one-on-one and also together in what’s dubbed the “Three Amigos” summit.
While trade and environmental issues are also part of the agenda, Biden has put the surge of asylum seekers and undocumented migrants at the southern US border, as well as a spike in dangerous drug smuggling, front and center.
On his way to Mexico City he stopped for several hours in El Paso, Texas, a city at the heart of the troubled border. In an indication of the political sensitivities, it was his first trip to the southern frontier since taking office.
Biden met with US officials at the Bridge of the Americas crossing, watching a demonstration of the latest border enforcement technology, as well as a customs sniffer dog. He later got out of his motorcade to inspect a section of the tall fencing that snakes between El Paso and its twin city Juarez on the Mexican side.
“They need a lot of resources. We’re going to get it for them,” Biden told reporters after his visit to the customs post.
Biden is under huge political pressure in the face of spiraling illegal border crossings and applications for asylum by people making perilous journeys from regional countries afflicted by repression, poverty or severe crime.
Adding to the crisis has been a surge in cross-border smuggling of the highly addictive and often deadly narcotic fentanyl.
Biden’s visit sought to respond to Republican accusations that he has been ignoring the situation.
But meeting Biden off Air Force One at El Paso’s airport, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott handed him a letter blasting the visit as “$20 billion too little and two years too late.”
– Asylum overhaul –
In his meetings with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Biden will address the regional scope of the issue.
“This is something that’s not unique to the United States,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told ABC News, noting that migrants are on the move from as far apart as Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
“It’s gripping the hemisphere, and a regional challenge requires a regional solution,” he said.
Biden on Thursday tried to tackle the problem, which has bedeviled US presidents for decades, by announcing an expansion of powers to expel people just showing up at the border without clearance. At the same time, a legal, strictly enforced pathway will be created for up to 30,000 migrants a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
The quota will be restricted to those who already have a US sponsor, while anyone attempting to cross the border illegally will be expelled in coordination with Mexico.
Human rights groups harshly criticized this as closing the door on desperate people, but the Biden administration says its actions will essentially kill the market for human smuggling networks, while encouraging legitimate arrivals.
Mayorkas acknowledged the lack of deeper solutions, telling reporters “we’ve very limited avenues for… dealing with a broken system.”
However, he said that since a peak in mid-December, numbers of people stopped crossing illegally in El Paso have “dropped precipitously” from around 2,000 people a day to 700.
– Drug wars vs development? –
In 2021, the United States and Mexico announced a revamp of their fight against drug trafficking to address the root causes of migration, encourage economic development, and bolster curbs against cross-border arms smuggling.
Mexico is plagued by cartel-related bloodshed that has seen more than 340,000 people murdered since the government deployed the military in the war on drugs in 2006.
Days before Biden’s visit, Mexican security forces captured a son of notorious drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who is serving a life sentence at a US prison.
The United States had offered a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to Ovidio Guzman’s arrest, accusing him of being a key player in the Sinaloa cartel founded by his father.
The timing was more than a coincidence, according to some analysts.
“When there are these types of meetings (between presidents), the Mexican authorities always have something to offer,” said security expert Ricardo Marquez.
by Jim Watson with Daniel Rook in Mexico City
