Mexico, US address immigration, anti-fentanyl, arms trafficking
Mexico City, May 30 (EFE).- Immigration and the collaboration to confront fentanyl and arms trafficking were among issues Mexico and the United States discussed Tuesday in a meeting diplomatic meeting in Mexico City.
The meeting took place at the National Palace between US Homeland Security Adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall and Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, who said his government was making progress in the matter of drug trafficking.
“The issue of fentanyl and the progress is being made was seen. Mexico is advancing a lot, especially the navy, the national security laboratory was integrated to it, the issue of laboratories and working in coordination is important because crime is becoming more and more sophisticated by the day,” Ebrard told media outside the National Palace after the meeting.
Ebrard also spoke about arms trafficking, in which he talked about the US’ intention to control the flow of long arms and pointed out that between 2020 and 2022 in Mexico, 26,000 long arms were seized from organized crime.
On the issue of migration, the foreign minister said the Mexican government, led by President Jose Manuel Lopez Obrador, has fought for regulated labor mobility and that the arrival of migrants at the southern and northern borders of Mexico has been reduced.
Lopez Obrador reported the meeting in a message on social media.
“Joint meeting on immigration with Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, White House National Security Advisor; Ambassador Ken Salazar and other public servants of the US government. Special thanks to the governors of Chiapas, Tabasco, Oaxaca and Veracruz,” he wrote on Twitter.
“With cooperation for the well-being and humanitarian treatment of migrants, we advance in the good neighbor policy,” the president added.
Hours earlier, Ebrard had announced one of the points that both countries would address at the meeting would be the decrease in migratory flows after the end of Title 42, as well as investment in Central American countries to correct the problems that generate the human displacements.
After the fall of Title 42 – passed by former US President Donald Trump and maintained by current President Joe Biden, which, under the pretext of the coronavirus pandemic, allowed the immediate expulsion of migrants who entered to the US – Ebrard said the border is receiving “only 20 or 30 people a day.”
The last visit of the US official Sherwood-Randall, considered the main White House strategist against fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths in the United States, took place on May 8. They addressed drug, arms and migrant trafficking, as well as cooperation for development.
Tuesday’s marked their third meeting, all framed by the diplomatic tensions between the countries over fentanyl trafficking, which the US Drug Enforcement Administration said is produced in Mexico with Chinese chemical precursors, and the new immigration policies. EFE
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