US, Mexico to boost efforts to curb record migration

Mexican and US officials have agreed to work together more closely to tackle record migration at their shared border, the countries’ governments said in a joint statement on Thursday, a day after high-level talks on stemming record numbers.Following a visit to Mexico by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the countries said they would seek to strengthen a sponsorship initiative for Venezuelan, Cuban, Nicaraguan and Haitian migrants and look to tackle the root causes of migration.The delegations, who are set to meet again in Washington next month, also discussed regularizing the situation of beneficiaries of the US Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme — the so-called Dreamers who were brought into the country illegally as children — and long-time undocumented Hispanic migrants living in the United States.The talks came after the US temporarily shuttered some border crossings to redeploy agents toward enforcement, sparking a trade slowdown and criticism by Republicans of the Biden administration’s border policies. Immigration and the border are expected to be top issues in the US 2024 elections, where President Joe Biden, a Democrat, is running for a second term.Earlier on Thursday, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said the two parties had agreed to keep border crossings open after the temporary closures."This agreement has been reached, the rail crossings and the border bridges are already being opened to normalise the situation,” Lopez Obrador told a morning press conference.Lopez Obrador said Wednesday’s meetings with the US delegation were "direct,” and he praised the Biden administration’s relationship with Mexico.More than half a million migrants this year crossed the dangerous Darien Gap jungle connecting South America with Central America — double last year’s record — with many fleeing crime, poverty and conflict to seek better prospects in the United States.The latest of a series of caravans of migrants and asylum seekers, many with small children, is slowly walking across southern Mexico, heading towards the US border. Lopez Obrador estimated that the caravan counts some 1,500 people but some activists and local media have put the figure at 7,000.