Mexico is reportedly ramping up its efforts to stop the unprecedented tide of illegal immigrants entering its southern border en route to the US after the policies of US Democratic President Joe Biden has caused the crisis to spiral in numbers expected to be the highest in the history of the Department of Homeland Security.
Multiple reports said Andrés Manuel López Obrador is preparing to “significantly reinforce” its actions on its own border with Guatemala in response to the crisis that has erupted at the US-Mexico border in recent weeks.
“Mexico is preparing to significantly reinforce efforts to detain US-bound migrants who illegally cross its border with Guatemala, in response to a jump in people trying to enter the United States, according to four people familiar with the matter,” Reuters said.
It added that “Mexico would deploy security forces to cut the flow of migrants, the bulk of whom come from Central America’s so-called Northern Triangle of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, whose economies were battered by the coronavirus pandemic and hurricanes last year.”
Mexico to deploy team that helped address migrant caravans
The report went on to say that Mexico’s National Guard militarized police — which led efforts to bring down the number of illegal immigrants entering Mexico from Central America during an increase in 2019, “would be at the fore of the containment drive.”
“The operations will be more frequent, more continuous and we will be taking part from next week,” Reuters said, citing a member of the National Guard.
Mexico’s support will be detrimental in helping President Biden manage the unprecedented number of individuals arriving at the US border, which hit a record last month and is further expected to mount in March.
As the Biden administration continued to downplay the situation at the border — refusing to call it a crisis — the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced that it had encountered at least 100,441 individuals in February alone, representing a 28% increase over January.
Of those, the CBP noted that unaccompanied children (UACs) have been arriving at the US border at rates faster than officials can process and transfer to sponsor homes. At the moment, at least 13,000 young migrants are being held in US custody.
Mexico worried about spiraling US border crisis
A separate report also bolstered claims from Republicans that terrorist suspects are using the situation at the border to enter the country after Mexican law enforcement officials reported catching 20 migrants at a checkpoint that were using “falsified paperwork with letterheads from the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR,” according to the Associated Press.
Mexico already earlier expressed worry that “the new US administration’s asylum policies are stoking illegal immigration and creating business for organized crime.”
Most recently, while maintaining that the border situation is under control, President Biden told potential immigrants “not to come.”
Meanwhile, in an Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, former President Donald Trump slammed Biden for ruining the “great relationship” that the US has built with the Mexican President — in partnering to control the tide of illegal immigration — and said that Biden put the progress in jeopardy by overturning his border policies and stopping the construction of the border wall.
The former GOP president — who earlier stopped similar migrant caravans in early 2019 — said the US “can’t handle [the increase in migrants].”
“It is a crisis like we have rarely had and certainly we have never had on the border. But it is going to get much worse,” he warned. Trump has implemented tough border policies and insisted that those seeking to enter the country should go through the legal process.
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