Biden and AMLO discuss illegal migration and fentanyl trafficking

First modification: 01/09/2023 – 10:20

Joe Biden and Andrés Manuel López Obrador will meet on Monday afternoon at the presidential palace in Mexico City, one day before holding the North American Summit together with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

At the discussion table, two crucial issues in the relations of the two countries. On the one hand, illegal migration to the United States, a continental problem that has worsened in recent years and has generated 2.3 million arrests and expulsions in 2022, five times more than in 2020.

“Our problems at the border did not arise overnight. And they will not be solved overnight,” Biden admitted on Twitter after being received by López Obrador on Sunday night.

Biden has been widely criticized for his passivity on this issue since he came to power. To try to improve his image, the US president made a stop in El Paso, a city on the troubled border with Mexico, where hundreds of undocumented immigrants are expelled every day.

In Mexico, Biden hopes to present a limited migration program to four countries plunged into a deep crisis, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, which will admit 30,000 people a month for two years, a program that has unleashed a hail of criticism.

“People who can benefit have to have a sponsor in the United States, they must have the financial means to finance a flight, a valid passport. And in those countries, due to the economic and political situation, many people do not have a valid document. So, the US is asking very vulnerable people for luxuries that cannot be afforded,” Ana Ortega of the organization Human Rights First told RFI.

Organizations such as the International Rescue Committee warn that partial measures “will only push asylum seekers into dangerous situations”, such as kidnappings by human traffickers.

Fight against fentanyl

The other hot topic is the invasion of fentanyl into US soil by violent Mexican cartels.

Fentanyl, a synthetic drug 50 times more powerful than heroin, manufactured with precursors trafficked from China, will mark discussions on security.

Nearly two-thirds of the 108,000 overdose deaths in the United States in 2021 involved synthetic opioids. And just in 2022, more fentanyl was seized than would be needed to kill the entire population of the United States, according to the US drug enforcement agency (DEA).

Biden is expected to request further cooperation and information sharing with Mexico. In the US entourage are the State Secretaries for National Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, and Justice, Merrick Garland.

In 2021, both countries announced a shift in their anti-drug policy, after 15 years of a predominantly military strategy. Since its launch in 2006, Mexico has accumulated some 340,000 murders and thousands of disappearances, without the cartels having weakened.

AMLO promotes a policy of “hugs, not bullets” that proposes increasing social investment in areas where cartels operate to attack the causes of drug trafficking.

But it maintains operations like the one that led to the capture, last Thursday in Culiacán, of Ovidio Guzmán, son of Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán, sentenced to life imprisonment in the United States. That operation left 29 dead.

According to Garland’s office, the visit will also address arms trafficking, as Mexico is pursuing two lawsuits against US manufacturers.