MEXICO CITY (AP) – Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Thursday his government would continue to press the United States to increase investment in poor countries during high-level security meetings.
López Obrador is scheduled to meet Friday in Mexico City with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Attorney General Merrick Garland among others.
For months, López Obrador has used every opportunity to press the U.S. to address the root causes of migration, especially from Central America. It is a priority shared by the Biden administration with Vice President Kamala Harris in charge of exploring what the U.S. could do.
“The immigration phenomenon, the immigration problem has to be addressed by creating opportunities for work, well-being in the places where the migrants originate so that before they leave those towns and abandon their families, risking it all, they have the option to work and be happy where they were born, where their people are, where their cultures are,” López Obrador said. “That is our focus.”
Last month, attention focused on some 15,000 mostly Haitian migrants who camped beside a border bridge between Mexico and Texas. It took a week for U.S. authorities to move them all and about half have already been flown back to Haiti. Mexico flew 129 Haitians back to their country Wednesday, though it was not clear if any of them had been among that group at the border.