Migrants poured across the U.S. southern border in record numbers, international rail bridges were suddenly closed and official ports of entry closed.
Desperate for help in December, President Biden called Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who told him to quickly send a delegation to the Mexican capital, according to several U.S. officials.
The White House was quick to do so. Shortly thereafter, Mexico reinforced the police. Illegal border crossings into the United States plummeted in January.
As immigration moves to the forefront of the U.S. presidential campaign, Mexico has emerged as a key player on an issue that could influence the election, and the White House has worked hard to preserve López Obrador’s cooperation.
The administration publicly claims that its diplomacy has been a success.
But behind closed doors, some senior Biden officials have come to see López Obrador as an unpredictable partner, who they say is not doing enough to consistently police his southern border or the police routes used by traffickers to bring in millions of migrants to the United States, according to several U.S. and Mexican officials. None of them would speak openly about sensitive diplomatic relations.
“We’re not getting the cooperation we should be getting,” said John Feeley, former deputy chief of mission in Mexico from 2009 to 2012. Feeley said the two countries carried out more joint patrols and investigations to secure the border during Obama’s presidency . administration.
“I know what it looks like when there’s real cooperation,” Feeley said, “as opposed to what we have now, which is touted as great cooperation, but I think that’s bupkis.”
While in office, President Donald J. Trump used the threat of tariffs to force López Obrador to implement his immigration crackdown.
Biden needs Mexico just as much, but he has taken a different approach, focusing instead on avoiding conflict with Mexico’s powerful and sometimes unstable leader in the hope that doing so will preserve his cooperation.
“AMLO correctly assessed his influence and recognized that we are using ours,” said Juan Gonzalez, Biden’s former top adviser on Latin America, using López Obrador’s nickname.
U.S. Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall said the White House was working “in partnership at the highest levels with the Government of Mexico,” adding: “President Lopez Obrador has been a critically important partner in the President Biden.”
Since 2022, Mexico has added hundreds of immigration checkpoints and increased law enforcement personnel, according to data provided by the U.S. State Department. Mexico is also detaining more migrants than ever in recent history.
However, the numbers arriving at the southern border have remained stubbornly high. There have been more than two million illegal border crossings in each of the last two fiscal years, double the number in 2019, the busiest year for arrests under Trump.
The lull earlier this year was still one of the highest Januarys on record for illegal crossings, according to U.S. federal data. Concerns mounted again in February.
In Mexico, officials say they have reached the limit of what they can achieve in the face of an extraordinary influx that has also overwhelmed their country.
López Obrador has pushed the White House to direct more development aid to Latin American countries to address the issues that cause migrants to leave in the first place.
“We want the root causes to be addressed, to be looked at seriously,” he told CBS’ “60 Minutes” in an interview broadcast Sunday. When asked if he would continue to protect the border even if the United States did not do what he asked, López Obrador replied: “Yes, because our relationship is very important.”
Migration has surged due to factors that are difficult for any government to control: persistent poverty, violent violence, the effects of climate change and the lingering impact of the coronavirus pandemic that have left people desperate for any chance of survival.
However, Mexican officials also blame American policies, saying migrants are incentivized to come to the United States because the asylum system is so backward that migrants have a good chance of staying in the country for years until their case is resolved. decided.
“This is entirely the United States’ responsibility, not ours,” Enrique Lucero, head of the Tijuana Office of Migrant Affairs, a local government agency, said in an interview, referring to the migrant crisis.
The American government “has to change the entire immigration and asylum system, the legal framework,” he said, “otherwise we end up doing the dirty work.”
In recent months, authorities in Tijuana have raided hotels and safe houses, increased security at official crossings and installed new checkpoints along a once-deserted section of the border near the city where migrants were crossing a gap in the wall.
Nothing worked for long.
The authorities’ crackdown has only put migrants in greater danger, aid groups say, leading smugglers to take people on riskier routes across the vast desert, where they often get lost and are found dehydrated.
One night in February, a smuggler dropped off a group of 18 people miles from the border, telling them they would quickly find a gap in the wall. In the darkness, the group got lost and walked for hours until they finally reached California and reached a makeshift camp where migrants often duck into portable toilets for shelter.
Two-year-old Denver Gonzalez couldn’t stop sobbing.
“I’m cold, I want to sleep,” the boy shouted repeatedly, as his father wrapped his small frame in blankets donated by a local volunteer.
“At a certain point you put pressure on them and they go to another place,” said David Pérez Tejada, head of the Baja California office of Mexico’s National Immigration Institute, referring to traffickers. “It’s all a cat and mouse game, and it’s extremely difficult to control.”
The White House has pushed the Mexican government to increase deportations, implement visa restrictions for more countries to make it difficult to enter Mexico and strengthen security forces at the southern border.
Since 2022, the Mexican government has added hundreds of immigration checkpoints, tightened security along rail routes used by migrants to travel north and increased law enforcement personnel tenfold, according to data provided by the Department of American state. Additionally, Mexico is detaining more migrants than ever in recent history.
Yet truckloads of migrants continue to cross the country, in part because smugglers often pay authorities at checkpoints, U.S. officials say.
The Biden administration wants Mexico to increase deportations. Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said last week it had reached an agreement with Venezuela to deport migrants and help them find work.
But repatriation flights are expensive and Mexico has legal obstacles to deporting people en masse. Last year the Mexican Supreme Court ruled that migrants could only be detained for 36 hours.
Many countries require at least 72 hours’ notice before accepting flights with their citizens, said a senior Mexican official who was not authorized to speak publicly. This means the government often has to release migrants before it can negotiate their return. Deportations from Mexico fell by more than half last year, Mexican government data shows.
The White House has also been pushing Mexico to do more of what some officials call “decompression,” which involves transporting people away from the border to somewhere deep inside the country.
“People are being detained by Mexican authorities and sent to random cities in the south,” said Erika Pinheiro, executive director of Al Otro Lado, or “To the Other Side,” a humanitarian group. “Forcing them to return to the north, pay money to the authorities and take all those risks again is inhumane.”
Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed reporting from Mexico City.
