US, Mexico leaders seek unity on migration, fentanyl
Discuss major challenges they face in meetings
MEXICO CITY — President Biden’s top Cabinet officials and their Mexican counterparts met Thursday as both countries sought a united front on drug and gun trafficking and managing record levels of migration.
The US officials — Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and Attorney General Merrick Garland — are particularly focused on bolstering efforts with Mexico to curtail the stream of deadly fentanyl wreaking havoc in communities throughout the United States.
But officials made a point to elevate the significance of the current global migration movement that has strained resources on both sides of the border.
“It is unquestionable that we have made real progress,” Blinken said Thursday, referring to the ongoing cooperation between the two countries on these issues. “We may have to make sure that our progress not only keeps up with the challenges, but actually gets ahead of them.”
The meetings came as the Biden administration waived laws so it could construct 17 miles of new border fencing in Texas. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico opposes the construction of a wall, and the new plans risk splintering the two nation’s strategies on migration.
The discussions also came as Republicans in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail, including former president Donald Trump, have proposed military action against cartels in Mexico, an idea that has angered Mexican officials.
Blinken, Garland, and Mayorkas met privately Thursday morning with López Obrador. American officials thanked Mexico for extraditing a top leader in the Sinaloa cartel, Ovidio Guzmán López, to the United States last month.
“His extradition is a powerful symbol of what we can accomplish when we work together,” Garland said after the meeting.
American and Mexican officials have adopted increasingly critical rhetoric over the best way to block the trafficking of fentanyl, a synthetic drug that is driving down life expectancy in the United States. The Biden administration wants Mexican law enforcement to crack down on labs where it is produced.
“The fentanyl being trafficked into the United States is the deadliest drug threat we have ever faced,” Garland said in a statement to The New York Times on Wednesday. “To fight it, we are going after every link in the cartels’ fentanyl trafficking networks, at every stage, and in every part of the world.”
During their visit, Garland, Mayorkas, and Blinken met with a range of Mexican officials, including López Obrador’s foreign minister, Alicia Bárcena Ibarra; and his security secretary, Rosa Icela Rodríguez. The Mexican officials urged the Biden administration to do more to keep American-made firearms from making it into the hands of the Mexican cartels.
Officials from both nations will hold a news conference Thursday afternoon, but they are not expected to unveil new policies.
US officials in recent weeks have pushed Mexico to invest more resources to intercept the chemicals shipped from China to Mexico’s ports and used to make fentanyl.
But López Obrador has denied fentanyl is made in Mexico and has said his nation should not be blamed for the record number of overdoses in the United States.
“Fortunately, we do not have excessive addictions, drug consumption, like other countries, and that is very good,” López Obrador said during his regularly scheduled news briefing Thursday before meeting with the US officials. “We regret what is happening in the United States, which are our brothers but have a consumption of fentanyl that causes 100,000 deaths a year of young people. We do not have that.”
The two nations will also aim to improve their strategy for deterring illegal migration in the Western Hemisphere — one of Biden’s primary political vulnerabilities as the 2024 presidential campaign ramps up.