White House assures Mexico that it will maintain tough immigration measures similar to Title 42 with other legal systems
According to the Mexican Foreign Minister, the United States will take measures in order to keep Title 42 in place with other legal systems.
White House Homeland Security Advisor Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall assured in a meeting with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador that the United States will maintain tough immigration measures similar to Title 42 after its expected repeal on May 11.
“They told us that they are going to take the measures, in order to their legal provisions, to maintain what is working with Title 42 with other legal systems,” said Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, in statements to the media at the end of the meeting, in which he was also present.
The Mexican foreign minister considered that migrants are being deceived, as they think that when the legal measure, adopted by Donald Trump and later continued by President Joe Biden to expel migrants with the argument of the covid-19 pandemic, loses its validity, they will be able to enter the United States without restrictions.
“They have already made it clear to us that this is not going to be the case,” assured the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE).
For his part, Lopez Obrador and members of his cabinet asked Sherwood-Randall for greater investment to facilitate legal pathways for migrants trying to reach the United States by crossing through Mexico.
“What was the Mexican president’s insistence? The need to invest, particularly in Central America, although not only, the need to expand those legal, documented, regular paths,” Ebrard explained.
Although in previous meetings with the White House representative the fentanyl crisis was addressed, on this occasion it was focused on migratory flows.
In a message published on his Twitter account, López Obrador said that they addressed them “with a humanist approach”.
Also present at the meeting, chaired by the President, were Ebrard; the Secretary of the Interior, Adán Augusto López; the Secretary of Defense, Luis Cresencio Sandoval; the Secretary of the Navy, Rafael Ojeda; and the Deputy Director General of Administration of the National Institute of Migration (INM), Armando López.
The United States, Ebrard continued, showed its concern for the increase in the flow of people from Venezuela and other countries arriving at its southern border, in addition to offering a response to Mexico’s demands for a regulated path.
“He commented to us that the humanitarian visa program for Haitians, Venezuelans, Cubans and Nicaraguans is going to be maintained. And they have expanded it now to 100,000, and it is something that has gone unnoticed, for people from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador,” he announced.
He also thanked U.S. President Joe Biden for sending “such a close agent” to inform López Obrador directly.
Although Ebrard did not comment on the matter, a U.S. official informed EFE on Tuesday that the Pentagon will temporarily deploy 1,500 soldiers to the border with Mexico for 90 days.
All of this comes at a time when, in the face of the end of Title 42, migration flows are expected to continue to grow, after the United States intercepted a record 2.76 million migrants last year and Mexico reported an annual increase of more than 43% in the number of people in irregular status in the country in 2022, to 444,439.