JOE SPINS JOBS SLUMP AS A WIN

US & Mexico forge pact as surge looms

Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Mexican officials on Friday to update security cooperation between the two countries as the White House was tracking roughly 20,000 Haitian migrants who were holed up in Colombia and preparing 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 Biden 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, 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 had entered the country through the Darien Gap this year.

In September, more than 30,000 Haitian illegal immigrants gathered at a squalid makeshift encampment near in Del Rio, Texas, before it was cleared away by US officials.

Blinken led a US contingent that included Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Attorney General Merrick Garland and other high-level administration officials in Friday’s talks in Mexico City.

But Vice President Kamala Harris — the administration’s “border czar” — was in New Jersey, where she stopped to sample goods at a Newark bakery after promoting child care in the president’s $3.5 trillion spending bill and COVID vaccines.

The US group met with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard.

The two delegations unveiled a security accord to combat drug trafficking, fentanyl smuggling, money laundering and illegal immigration.

Blinken, at a news conference with Ebrard, called the talks “productive” and said they focused on a host of issues.

The Biden administration also 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,” an official told the Examiner, saying a “collaborative approach” was needed.