US officials to meet with counterparts in Mexico on drugs, arms trafficking and migration

MEXICO CITY (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and different high officers from the Biden administration will go to Mexico on Wednesday to debate shared safety points, foremost amongst them trafficking of the artificial opioid fentanyl, but in addition arms trafficking and rising migration.

The most recent spherical of the Excessive-Degree Safety Dialogue brings collectively Blinken, U.S. Legal professional Common Merrick Garland and Homeland Safety Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, amongst others, with their Mexican counterparts for 2 days of talks.

Heightened migration flows are anticipated to be mentioned because the Biden administration comes underneath rising stress from Republicans and mayors from the president’s personal celebration to do extra to sluggish migrant arrivals.

Blinken was scheduled to debate migration Wednesday with Mexico’s International Affairs Secretary Alicia Bárcena, in addition to the international ministers of Colombia and Panama.

New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams was additionally scheduled to reach in Mexico Metropolis Wednesday, a part of a swing via Latin America geared toward studying extra about asylum seekers’ paths to the U.S.

In August, the U.S. Border Patrol made 181,509 arrests on the Mexican border, up 37% from July however little modified from August 2022 and properly beneath the greater than 220,000 in December, in keeping with figures launched in September.

On Tuesday night time, lots of of migrants arrived within the northern Mexican border metropolis of Ciudad Juarez throughout the border from El Paso, Texas aboard a freight practice. They clambered off the practice and instantly made their strategy to the border the place they stopped at coils of barbed wire.

Elizabeth Romero, 32, left Venezuela three months earlier along with her husband and 6-year-old son. She was three weeks pregnant then and spent her first trimester climbing via the jungle-clad border of Colombia and Panama and most lately spent three days aboard the freight practice that introduced her to the U.S.-Mexico border.

She and her son, who celebrated his sixth birthday atop a freight automobile this week, have suffered bouts of fever. They left Venezuela as a result of they couldn’t make ends meet financially. Her household stays there.

“We hope that the USA receives us and offers us the assist that we’d like,” Romero stated. They deliberate to show themselves into U.S. authorities on the border as a result of they’d already waited three months with out receiving an appointment to request asylum via CBP One, a cellular app.

The U.S. has tried to get Mexico and international locations farther south to do extra. In April, the U.S., Panama and Colombia introduced a marketing campaign to sluggish migration via the treacherous Darien Hole dividing Colombia and Panama. However migration via the jungle has solely accelerated and is predicted to strategy some 500,000 individuals this yr.

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Fernández reported from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.