Mexican leader says Biden offers $4B for Central America

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s first calls to foreign leaders went to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at a strained moment for the U.S. relationship with its North American neighbors.

Mexico’s president said Saturday that Biden told him the U.S. would send $4 billion to help development in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala — nations whose hardships have spawned tides of migration through Mexico toward the United States.

López Obrador, who spoke Friday with Biden by phone, said the two discussed immigration and the need to address the root causes of why people migrate.

Mexico has stopped recent attempts by caravans of Central American migrants to cross Mexico.

Biden’s call to Trudeau, also on Friday, came after the Canadian prime minister this past week publicly expressed disappointment over Biden’s decision to issue an executive order halting construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. The long-disputed project was projected to carry 800,000 barrels of oil a day from Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast,.

Trudeau told reporters before the call on Friday that he wouldn’t allow his differences with Biden over the project to become a source of tension in the U.S.-Canada relationship.

Biden’s call with López Obrador also came at a tense moment — days after the Mexican president accused the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration of fabricating drug trafficking charges against the country’s former defense secretary.

Mexico demanded the return of former Defense Secretary Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos after he was arrested in Los Angeles in October, threatening to restrict U.S. agents in Mexico if he wasn’t returned. U.S. prosecutors agreed to drop charges and return Cienfuegos to Mexico.

But Mexico passed a law restricting foreign agents and removing their immunity anyway.

López Obrador said in a statement Friday that the conversation with Biden was “friendly and respectful.”