President willing to help on border migrant crush

MEXICO CITY (AP):

Mexico’s president said on Friday that he is willing to help out with a surge of migrants that led to the closure of border crossings with the United States, but he wants the US government to open talks with Cuba and send more development aid to migrants’ home countries.

The comments by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador came a day after the US announced that a delegation of top US officials would visit Mexico for talks on how to enforce immigration rules at the two countries’ shared border.

López Obrador confirmed that US officials want Mexico to do more to block migrants at its southern border with Guatemala, or make it more difficult to move across Mexico by train or in trucks or buses, a policy known as ‘contention’.

But the president said that in exchange, he wanted the United States to send more development aid to migrants’ home countries, and to reduce or eliminate sanctions against Cuba and Venezuela.

“We are going to help, as we always do,” López Obrador said. “Mexico is helping reach agreements with other countries, in this case Venezuela.”

“We also want something done about the (US) differences with Cuba,” López Obrador said. “We have already proposed to President (Joe) Biden that a US-Cuba bilateral dialogue be opened.

“That is what we are going to discuss, it is not just contention,” he said at his daily morning press briefing.

Mexico is apparently offering to negotiate with Venezuela, whose people make up a large part of the surge of migrants at the US southwestern border. That surge has led US officials to pull immigration officers away from two Texas border rail crossings that are vital to Mexico’s economy.

López Obrador has long opposed US sanctions on Cuba, whose migrants are also streaming to the US border. And the Mexican president has long pressed the United States to contribute to a tree-planting programme and to youth scholarship and apprentice programmes that he has been pushing for Central America.

López Obrador said the development aid will help stem residents’ need to migrate.