US agrees to keep border crossings open, says Mexico

Following conversations aimed at tackling rising migration, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced Thursday that visiting US officials had agreed to keep legal border crossings open. On Wednesday, Lopez Obrador met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other top US officials, including Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, for more than two hours. “There’s more and more movement on the border, on the bridges, and that’s why we must be careful so that the crossings are not closed. That agreement was reached,” Lopez Obrador told reporters. “The crossings for the railway and border bridges are already being opened to normalize the situation,” he added, highlighting the strong trade ties between the two countries. He stated that the two sides had agreed to meet on a regular basis to discuss rising migration, which has become a big concern for US President Joe Biden as he approaches an election year. Overwhelmed American officials shuttered two rail bridge crossings on the Mexico-US border in Texas earlier this month for several days to try to curb illicit entry on goods trains. Legal crossings have also been halted at various car and pedestrian entrance ports in Texas, Arizona, and California in order to free up resources for dealing with unauthorised immigrants. In recent weeks, US border agents have recorded around 10,000 migrant crossings each day, many of whom are escaping poverty and violence in Central America. There has also been an uptick in migrants traveling through Mexico from Haiti and Venezuela. Blinken’s unusual Christmas week visit came as the rival Republican Party presses Biden for a migration crackdown in return for their agreeing in Congress to support for Ukraine. In a joint statement released by the White House on Thursday, the United States and Mexico “reaffirmed their existing commitments on fostering an orderly, humane, and regular migration.” That included addressing the “root causes” of migration such as poverty, inequality and violence, it said – an approach repeatedly requested by Lopez Obrador. “Ongoing cooperation also includes enhanced efforts to disrupt human smuggling, trafficking, and criminal networks, and continuing the work to promote legal instead of irregular migration pathways,” the statement said. “Also, both delegations agreed on the importance of maintaining and facilitating the vital bilateral trade at our shared border,” it said, adding that the two sides would meet again in Washington in January.