UNPLEASANT TRUTHS

President Joe Biden is about to make his first official visit to Mexico for the North American Leaders’ Summit in Mexico City. His meeting with Mexican counterpart Andrés Manuel López Obrador can’t happen a moment too soon. The relationship between the two countries is at a critical juncture — and they won’t be able to move ahead without the acknowledgment of some unpleasant truths on both sides.

Unfortunately that seems unlikely.

Above all, the leaders must confront the intertwined issues of immigration and crime. Ahead of this week’s visit, U.S. media were speculating about a possible Biden trip to the border to address the burgeoning migrant crisis. But staging a photo op shouldn’t be a priority.

Both Washington and Mexico City are guilty of negligence on migration. For years, the two governments have done basically nothing. As a result, thousands of migrants now face unimaginable hardship in Mexico’s border cities. Shelters are overflowing, and neither government seems to have a strategy for preventing these disadvantaged migrants from being drawn into drug-related crime or human trafficking. Citizens in the cities on both sides of the border seem increasingly exhausted by the sense of never-ending crisis.

In recent years, the U.S. government has touted an approach to address the “root causes” of immigration in Central America while demanding punitive measures from its Mexican counterpart. The situation deteriorated markedly under Donald Trump, and Biden has not done much to improve it. The U.S. political pressures driving this shift — particularly the nativist bent of the Republican Party — are (regrettably) comprehensible. But that doesn’t make them any less repugnant.

We are now witnessing the effective reversal of long-standing traditions of humane treatment of refugees in both the United States and Mexico. Although the calculated coldness of policymakers in both countries is clearly aimed at reducing incentives for migrants to journey north, that hardly justifies the vast misery that the resulting policies are creating.

The situation is especially dire for migrants from countries far away who arrive at the northern border of Mexico with virtually no hope of legally entering the United States. Venezuela offers the most pressing example. What do American and Mexican politicians imagine will happen to the Venezuelans who left everything behind them to follow the illusion of safe haven but now sleep on the streets and under bridges in cities scarred by crime?

Biden and López Obrador also urgently need to address the issue of insecurity in Mexico and the growing power of organized crime. It is now clear that the current anti-crime strategy of the Mexican government has failed. López Obrador’s presidency is on track to become the most violent in the country’s modern history. Journalists, activists and ordinary citizens are among those to have paid the price.

The bloodshed — including a recent prison break in Ciudad Juárez that took 17 lives — has not abated. Yet the president continues to claim otherwise, insisting on presenting “alternative data” (his preferred euphemism for the misrepresentation of the country’s reality). Mexican media have accused him of presenting some 100,000 lies in his daily press conferences, a feat that makes Donald Trump look like Lincoln.

Biden and López Obrador need to be real.

This lawless environment has enabled an explosion in the production of fentanyl. While López Obrador has stuck stubbornly to his controversial national security master plan, the drug cartels have relentlessly upgraded their own systems for the manufacture and distribution of fentanyl. The result has been an epidemic of addiction and death north of the border.

These twin crises of immigration and crime demand serious and immediate cooperation from both governments. The humanitarian crisis along the border is untenable, and will likely worsen after Biden’s recent announcement of stiffer guidelines for potential asylum seekers from countries such as Venezuela and Nicaragua. With new restrictions in place, thousands more will be stranded in Mexico, where their situation will be dire. Both the United States and Mexico should agree to invest in urgent shelter infrastructure and aim to provide at least basic living conditions for those gathered at the border. Deterrence cannot be an excuse for cruelty.

Helping Mexico emerge from years of bloodshed and curtailing the supply of synthetic opioids in the United States will require an end to the rising mistrust between the two countries that has led to an erosion of crucial cooperation. The just-announced recapture of Ovidio Guzmán-lópez, son of the imprisoned drug lord Joaquin “Chapo” Guzmán, is a step in the right direction.

More must be done, and fast. With only two years left in their presidencies, time is running out for Biden and López Obrador.

is an award-winning Mexican journalist, author and news anchor. He is currently national news anchor for Univision, based out of Miami. This essay initially ran in The Washington Post.