Members of the Biden administration, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, met with Mexican officials Friday about updating the security cooperation between the two countries as the White House tracks roughly 20,000 Haitian migrants who are holed up in Colombia and waiting to surge to the US border.
The Haitians are “forming a human bottleneck … even bigger than some of the recent migrant logjams on the US-Mexico border,” a senior administration official told the Washington Examiner.
The migrants have gathered in Necocli, a small town on Colombia’s coast, to begin the perilous journey through Panama’s Darien Gap to the US after arriving from Brazil, Chile and other South American nations.
Although the Biden administration has warned them not to come to the US, thousands continue to risk their lives to cross the Darien Gap, a roadless stretch of jungle patrolled by bandits and drug-traffickers.
Panama said more than 88,000 migrants have entered the country after passing through the Darien Gap this year.
In September, more than 30,000 Haitian illegal immigrants gathered at a squalid makeshift encampment near Del Rio, Texas, after crossing the border.
Blinken headed up the US contingent to Mexico that also included Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Attorney General Merrick Garland and other high-level administration officials traveling to Mexico City.
They met with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard.
The new accord — known as the US-Mexico Bicentennial Framework for Security, Public Health and Safe Communities — would combat drug trafficking, fentanyl smuggling, money laundering and illegal immigration.
Blinken, speaking at a news conference with Ebrard, called the discussions “productive” and said they centered around a host of issues related to the two countries and their shared border.
He said they focused on three-pillars.
One is protecting the health and safety of each country’s citizens, including preventing human rights abuses.The other is to combat the trafficking of drugs, arms and humans.
The third is to collaborate on stopping money laundering and working together to investigate and prosecute organized criminal activity. He said the framework is “rooted in the idea that we have a shared responsibility as neighbors, as partners, to improve security for the people of our nations.”
“It marks the beginning of a new chapter in Mexico-US security cooperation, one that will see us working as equal partners in defining and tackling shared priorities, one that seeks to address the root causes of the security challenges that we face, including inequity, corruption, impunity,” he said.
He said the partnership will work by not only “modernizing law enforcement, but also strengthening public health, the rule of law and broad-based economic opportunity,” Blinken said.
At a breakfast meeting earlier on Friday, López Obrador said “it would be very unfortunate if we didn’t understand each other, if our cooperation, the friendship between our governments and our peoples wasn’t strengthened.”
Along with the talks with Mexican officials, the administration is in “very close communication” with Colombia and Panama about stemming the flow of illegal immigrants, the Washington Examiner reported.
“We’re shifting to having a regional conversation,” the official told the newspaper, saying a “collaborative approach” is needed.
“You want a functioning border, but you also want to create alternatives to individuals that are taking that dangerous journey,” the official said.
Part of that would be to ensure countries abide by their responsibilities to hold people while they wait their claims for asylum to be processed in the US.
“We’re not just making sure that governments have secured their borders but are also upholding their own asylum and refugee obligations,” the official said.
With Post wires
