Migrants streamed across the U.S. southern border in record numbers, international railroad bridges were abruptly closed and official ports of entry closed.
In his desperate plea for help, President Biden called Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in December, who told him to quickly send a delegation to the Mexican capital, according to several U.S. officials.
The White House rushed to do so. Soon after, Mexico tightened enforcement. Illegal border crossings into the United States fell sharply through January.
As immigration moves to the forefront of the U.S. presidential campaign, Mexico has emerged as a key player on an issue that has the potential to influence the election, and the White House has worked hard to maintain cooperation with Mr. López Obrador.
The government publicly declares that its diplomacy has been a success.
But behind closed doors, some senior Biden officials see Mr. López Obrador as an unpredictable partner who they say is not doing enough to consistently police his own southern border or police routes used by smugglers to bring millions of migrants there the United States, according to several U.S. and Mexican officials. None of them would discuss sensitive diplomatic relations in confidence.
“We’re not getting the cooperation we should be getting,” said John Feeley, a former deputy chief of mission to Mexico from 2009 to 2012. Mr. Feeley said the two countries conducted more joint patrols and investigations around the border during the Obama administration to secure administration.
“I know what it looks like when there is real collaboration,” Mr. Feeley said, “as opposed to what we have now, which is touted as a great collaboration but, in my opinion, is nonsense.”
During his time in office, President Donald J. Trump used the threat of tariffs to force Mr. López Obrador to implement his crackdown on migration.
Mr. Biden needs Mexico just as much but has taken a different approach, focusing instead on avoiding conflict with the powerful and sometimes volatile Mexican leader in the hope that this will maintain his cooperation.
“AMLO correctly assessed his influence and recognized that we were using ours,” said Juan Gonzalez, Mr. Biden’s former top adviser on Latin America, using Mr. López Obrador’s nickname.
Liz Sherwood-Randall, U.S. homeland security adviser, said the White House was “working at the highest levels with the Mexican government,” adding: “President Lopez Obrador has been an extremely important partner of President Biden.”
According to the US State Department, Mexico has added hundreds of immigration checkpoints and increased enforcement staff tenfold since 2022. Mexico is also detaining more migrants than at any time in recent history.
Still, the numbers arriving at the southern border remain stubbornly high. There have been more than two million illegal border crossings in each of the last two fiscal years, twice as many as in 2019, the year with the most arrests under Trump.
The lull earlier this year was still one of the highest months for illegal border crossings on record, according to federal data. Fears increased again in February.
In Mexico, officials say they have reached the limit of their capabilities in the face of an extraordinary influx that has also overwhelmed their country.
Mr. López Obrador has pushed the White House to provide more development aid to Latin American countries to address the problems that cause migrants to leave the country in the first place.
“We want the causes to be addressed and seriously investigated,” he said in an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday. Asked whether he would continue to secure the border even if the United States did not do what he asked, Mr. López Obrador replied: “Yes, because our relationship is very important.”
Migration has increased due to factors difficult for a single government to control: persistent poverty, raging violence, the effects of climate change and the ongoing impact of the coronavirus pandemic, which have left people desperate for a chance to survive .
But Mexican officials also blame American policies, saying migrants have an incentive to come to the United States because the asylum system is so overwhelmed that migrants have a good chance of staying in the country for years until their cases are decided be.
“This is entirely the responsibility of the United States, not ours,” Enrique Lucero, head of the Office of Migration Affairs in Tijuana, a local government agency, said in an interview, referring to the migrant crisis.
The American government “has to change its entire immigration and asylum system, the legal framework,” he said, “otherwise we end up doing the dirty work.”
In recent months, authorities in Tijuana have raided hotels and safe houses, increased security at official border crossings and set up new checkpoints along a once-deserted stretch of border near the city where migrants passed through a gap in the wall.
Nothing worked for a long time.
Authorities’ actions have only put migrants in greater danger, aid groups say, and prompted smugglers to take people on riskier routes across the vast desert, where they often get lost and found dehydrated.
One night in February, a smuggler dropped off a group of 18 people miles from the border and told them they would quickly find a gap in the wall. In the darkness, the group got lost and walked for hours until they finally reached California and made it to a makeshift camp where migrants often take shelter in portable toilets.
Two-year-old Denver Gonzalez couldn’t stop sobbing.
“I’m cold, I want to sleep,” the boy screamed repeatedly as his father wrapped his tiny body in blankets donated by a local volunteer.
“At one point you put pressure on them, and then they go to another place,” said David Pérez Tejada, head of the Baja California office of Mexico’s National Immigration Institute, referring to the smugglers. “It’s all a game of cat and mouse and it’s extremely difficult to control.”
The White House has pushed the Mexican government to increase deportations, impose visa restrictions on more countries to make entry into Mexico more difficult and beef up security forces at the southern border.
Since 2022, the Mexican government has set up hundreds of immigration checkpoints, increased security along train routes where migrants travel north and increased enforcement staff tenfold, according to the U.S. State Department. Mexico is also detaining more migrants than at any time in recent history.
Still, truckloads of migrants continue to move through the country, in part because smugglers often pay checkpoint authorities, U.S. officials say.
The Biden administration wants Mexico to increase deportations. Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said last week it had reached an agreement with Venezuela to deport migrants and help them find jobs.
But repatriation flights are expensive, and in Mexico there are legal hurdles to the mass deportation of people. Last year, Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled that migrants could only be detained for 36 hours.
Many countries require at least 72 hours’ notice before accepting flights carrying their citizens, said a senior Mexican official who was not authorized to speak publicly. This means the government often has to release migrants before it can negotiate their return. Mexican government data shows deportations from Mexico fell by more than half last year.
The White House has also pushed Mexico to do more of what some officials call “decompression,” which involves moving people away from the border to a location deep in the country.
“People are being arrested by Mexican authorities and sent to random cities in the south,” said Erika Pinheiro, executive director of Al Otro Lado, or To the Other Side, a humanitarian group. “Forcing them to move back north, pay bribes to the authorities and take all these risks again is inhumane.”
Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed reporting from Mexico City.
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2024-03-26 06:03:05
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