(DCWatchdog.com) – Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has announced that he will have a telephone call with President Joe Biden to discuss “migration” and the trafficking of fentanyl, the lethal synthetic drug.
Lopez Obrador’s announcement came during his regular press conference on Monday. He said he would be talking to Biden on Tuesday, Newsmax reported.
More specifically, the populist Mexican leader said his talks with the American president would focus on border issues as well as economic collaboration.
“Nine-thirty in the morning. We had been looking to connect, but the possibility had not come up because we were traveling. We will continue talking about the cooperation we have, which is very, very good and which we will maintain,” Lopez Obrador declared.
Biden’s conversation with the Mexican leader will come ahead of the expiration of Title 42, the Trump-era policy providing for the quick expulsion of illegal immigrants by the U.S. Border Patrol on public health grounds.
Title 42, used to deport over 2.5 million migrants, will end on Thursday, May 11.
Last week, the Mexican government agreed to keep receiving “some non-Mexican migrants from the United States after the end of Title 42,” The Hill reported.
Also, last week, Lopez Obrador urged migrants to watch out not to be deceived by human traffickers since the upcoming U.S. policy change would mean a “softening” of U.S. border controls.
Meanwhile, Mexico’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard declared that migration flows through his country had increased because human smugglers were “deceiving” migrants.
Title 42 allowed U.S. border officials to expel most illegal immigrants back to Mexico without “registering an official record of each encounter,” the report points out.
Without the Trump-era policy, Border Patrol officers will apprehend illegal aliens but will be obliged to file paperwork for each migrant encounter and screen them for asylum claims.
The announcement that Biden will have a conversation with Mexico’s leader comes after, at the end of last week, the latter sent the former a letter urging the U.S. government, especially USAID (the U.S. Agency for International Development), to stop funding Mexican organizations.
Lopez Obrador declared the groups funded by USAID in Mexico opposed his government – though he didn’t specify their names.
“The U.S. government, specifically through USAID, has for some time been financing organizations openly against the legal and legitimate government I represent,” he said in the letter, dated May 2, as cited by Al Jazeera.
“This is clearly an interventionist act, contrary to international law and the relations which should prevail between free and sovereign states,” the Mexican president added.
The first time he denounced USAID funding was in 2021, specifically to an NPO called “Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity.
“A foreign government can’t provide money to political groups. It’s promoting a form of coup,” Lopez Obrador declared at the time.
According to Politico’s report, the USAID funding would feature prominently in the Biden – Lopez Obrador conversation – alongside migration, fentanyl trafficking, and economic cooperation.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Monday he would speak with his U.S. counterpart President Joe Biden Tuesday about the opioid crisis and other important issues. https://t.co/FY9iaOt0x1 pic.twitter.com/VEvsxjQtno
— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) May 8, 2023
