American authorities report 10,000 daily crossings in recent weeks at the border with Mexico.
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They take part in “the exodus from poverty”. Several thousand people wishing to reach the United States set out on Sunday, December 24, from the town of Tapachula, in southern Mexico. According to BBCthis caravan then already stretched over 15 km and had approximately “7,000 people, mainly from South and Central America“. Among them are families with children.
Between October 2022 and September 2023, more than 2.4 million migrants were intercepted at the land border between Mexico and the United States. A figure up compared to previous years and a dangerous route, particularly when it comes to crossing the Rio Grande, the river which separates the two countries: on Thursday, two would-be immigrants drowned at the border, near the town of Matamoros, trying to cross a muddy area of the river where the waters mix with garbage.
To discuss the migration issue, American President Joe Biden and his Mexican counterpart, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, spoke on the telephone on Thursday.
A bilateral meeting on Wednesday
On Friday, the Mexican president confirmed the holding of a bilateral meeting on December 27 with the American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, the Secretary of National Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, and the National Security Advisor at the White House, Liz Sherwood Randall.
Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador recognized an increase in the number of migrants crossing Mexico towards the United States, coming from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba and Ecuador, and pledged to strengthen measures of restraint of migrants in the south of the country, on the border with Guatemala.
“The agreement is that we continue to work together, and we already have a proposal to strengthen our plans,” the Mexican president told the press. While in the United States, the migration crisis embarrasses Joe Biden as an election year approaches, the American delegation “will highlight the need for legal pathways and additional measures from partners across the region,” American authorities announced on Friday.
Faced with the daily arrival of thousands of migrants from Mexico – 10,000 daily crossings in recent weeks, according to the border police – the American authorities declare themselves overwhelmed. Crossing points have recently been suspended in Texas, Arizona and California, with border police saying they need to redeploy staff to focus on intercepting and registering migrants.