Mexican migrants are reduced to sleeping atop freight trains as their caravan continues to make its way from the southern part of their country, bound for the US border.
The pictures emerged just a day before Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas will visit Mexico to meet with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to discuss the ongoing crisis, one of the many issues plaguing the Biden administration ahead of the 2024 election.
The officials will discuss ‘unprecedented irregular migration in the Western Hemisphere and identify ways Mexico and the United States will address border security challenges,’ according to a statement from State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.
Last week, Biden spoke with Lopez Obrador by telephone, during which the two leaders said that more enforcement was needed at their shared frontier.
López Obrador has said he is willing to help, but also says he wants to see progress in U.S. relations with Cuba and Venezuela, two of the top senders of migrants, and more development aid for the region.
Both sides face strong pressure to reach an agreement after past steps like limiting direct travel into Mexico or deporting some migrants failed to stop the influx. This month, as many as 10,000 migrants were arrested daily at the southwest US border.
Migrants rest on railroad cars as they wait for a freight train to travel to the U.S. border, at a rail yard in Chihuahua, Mexico
Around 10,000 people have been seeking to enter without authorization each day on the southern US border, nearly double the number before the pandemic
This latest caravan of people left southern Mexico no Sunday
US border authorities have been so overwhelmed that they have suspended several legal crossings to focus on processing migrants
The US has struggled to process thousands of migrants at the border, or house them once they reach northern cities.
Mexican industries were stung last week when the U.S. briefly closed two vital Texas railway crossings, arguing border patrol agents had to be reassigned to deal with the surge.
Blinken left open the possibility those crossing could be reopened if Mexico provides more help.
‘Secretary Blinken will discuss unprecedented irregular migration in the Western Hemisphere and identify ways Mexico and the United States will address border security challenges, including actions to enable the reopening of key ports of entry across our shared border,’ his office said in a statement prior to Wednesday’s meeting.
Mexico already has assigned over 32,000 military troops and National Guard officers — about 11 percent of its total forces — to enforce immigration laws, and the National Guard now detains far more migrants than criminals.
But the shortcomings of that approach were on display Tuesday, when National Guard officers made no attempt to stop a caravan of about 6,000 migrants, many from Central America and Venezuela, when they walked through Mexico’s main inland immigration inspection point in southern Chiapas state, near the Guatemala border.
In the past, Mexico has let such caravans go through, trusting that they would tire themselves out walking along the highway. No caravan has ever walked the 1,000 miles to the southern border.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador discussed migration in a telephone call Thursday with Biden as migrants spent Christmas Day sleeping outdoors
Lopez Obrador told reporters Friday that Mexico would ‘reinforce our plans’ to deal with US-bound migrants – few of whom are Mexicans – after his government also said it was at the breaking point on enforcement
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the US delegation would speak to Lopez Obrador on the ‘urgent need for lawful pathways and additional enforcement actions’ on migration.
Mexico, under agreements with both Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump, has agreed at least temporarily to take in migrants seeking to cross into the United States
A Bible is seen on a railroad car as migrants wait for a freight train to travel to the U.S. border in a rail yard, in Chihuahua
But wearing them out — by obliging Venezuelans and others to hike through the jungle-clad Darien Gap, or corralling migrants off passenger buses in Mexico — no longer works.
Many have simply found other ways. So many migrants have been hopping freight trains through Mexico that one of the country’s two major railroad companies was forced to suspend trains in September because of safety concerns.
Actual police raids to pull migrants off railway cars — the kind of action Mexico took a decade ago — might be one thing the American delegation would like to see.
López Obrador confirmed last week that U.S. officials want Mexico to do more to block migrants at its southern border with Guatemala, or make it more difficult to move across Mexico by train or in trucks or buses, a policy known as ‘contention.’
But the president said that in exchange he wanted the United States to send more development aid to migrants’ home countries, and to reduce or eliminate sanctions against Cuba and Venezuela.
‘We are going to help, as we always do,’ López Obrador said. ‘Mexico is helping reach agreements with other countries, in this case Venezuela.’
‘We also want something done about the (US) differences with Cuba,’ López Obrador said. ‘We have already proposed to President (Joe) Biden that a US-Cuba bilateral dialogue be opened.’
‘That is what we are going to discuss, it is not just contention,’ he said.
Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to challenge Biden in November, is again campaigning on stridently anti-immigrant rhetoric, accusing foreigners of ‘poisoning the blood of our country’
Migrants camp in tents outside the Church of Santa Cruz y La Soledad in Mexico City
Migrants walk in a caravan heading to the northern border with the US, in the municipality of Huixtla in Chiapas, Mexico, on 26 December
Andrew Rudman, director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, expected Blinken to seek additional support from Mexico to keep migrants within its borders, such as temporary work permits
Migrants have been fleeing Central American countries ravaged by poverty, violence and disasters worsened by climate change
Mexico says it detected 680,000 migrants moving through the country in the first 11 months of 2023.
In May, Mexico agreed to take in migrants from countries such as Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba who had been turned away by the US for not following rules that provided new legal pathways to asylum and other forms of migration.
On Wednesday, migrants and asylum seekers, many carrying small children, walked along the highway near the southern Mexican city of Villa Comaltitlán. Some held a banner reading ‘Exodus from poverty.’
Rosa, from El Salvador, said she hoped the officials would ease the suffering of migrants.
‘We are looking for something better for our children and our families,’ she said as she walked. ‘I hope this touches their hearts,’ she added.
Migrants and asylum seekers transit through Mexico to the US to escape violence, , economic distress and negative impacts of climate change, according the United Nations.
The number crossing the perilous Darien Gap straddling Colombia and Central America has topped half a million this year, double last year’s record.
Migrants in Huixtla heading to the border as a Mexican National Guard patrol moves alongside them
Migrants are grouped up by US National Guard after crossing the border Eagle Pass, Texas, on December 26
Migrants walk to a processing center under US authorities escort after crossing the border
Migrant rights activist Luis García Villagrán criticized the meeting, saying the officials’ main concerns are domestic electoral issues, and that more enforcement efforts aimed at stopping migrants from reaching the U.S. border would only hurt the poorest of the poor.
‘They want women and children to be bargaining chips,’ he said, speaking alongside the caravan on Tuesday.
‘We are not bargaining chips for any politicians.’