WASHINGTON — President Biden will visit Mexico next month for a meeting with Canadian and Mexican leaders as the migrant crisis continues along the southern border.
The Jan. 9-10 trip, confirmed by White House spokesman John Kirby, coincides with record-breaking illegal border crossings, which could worsen if the Supreme Court allows an end to its Title 42 COVID-19 expulsion policy.
This will be Biden’s first trip as president to Latin America, as well as his first trip to a different country in the Western Hemisphere, and will include talks with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
López Obrador, known by his initials AMLO, had a difficult relationship with Biden.
The 69-year-old leftist scorned the June 2022 Summit of the Americas hosted by Biden and supported the reinstatement of former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account.
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Biden presided over a record nearly 2.4 million illegal arrests for crossing the border in fiscal yr 2022, which ended Sept. 30, and that number is expected to extend if Title 42 ends border officials’ ability to quickly turn back migrants, citing concerns about public health.
Chief Justice John Roberts on Monday stayed a lower court order to abolish Title 42, which was as a consequence of expire on Wednesday. It is unclear how long the accelerated challenge from the 19 Republican-led states will last.
A whole bunch of migrants released by border officials are already sleeping on the streets of El Paso, Texas, where Democratic Mayor Oscar Leeser declared a state of emergency on Saturday in anticipation of the border wave.
Biden canceled construction of the US-Mexico border wall and ended Trump’s “Stay in Mexico” policy, which requires asylum seekers who cross Mexico to attend south of the border for his or her persecution claims to be processed.
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The Mexican president gave Biden a black eye in June, skipping the Summit of the Americas – thwarting Biden’s plans to point out warmer relations than under Trump, who often issued stern warnings to the Mexican government and even threatened to chop off trade in “caravans” of migrants passing through the country.
The AMLO boycott meant that the leader of the most populous Spanish-speaking country was absent from the conference, which encouraged other leaders to hang around at the event. The snub was motivated by Biden’s decision not to ask the authoritarian leftist leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
AMLO further ruffled the feathers of Democrats on November 19, tweeting that he thought Trump ought to be allowed to return to Twitter after the platform’s latest CEO Elon Musk created a poll asking what to do with a former president who was fired after last yr’s Capitol riots.
“I already voted for Trump to make use of Twitter. The Statue of Liberty cannot remain an empty symbol” López Obrador tweeted. Trump eventually got his account back, but has yet to tweet from it.
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![Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has spoken out against the social media giants who banned President Trump.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/01/210115-amlo-trump-social-media.jpg?w=1024)
Trump and AMLO developed a surprisingly warm relationship after working together to ratify the US-Mexico-Canada USMCA trade pact, which replaced the NAFTA trade cope with various reforms, including those aimed at supporting domestic manufacturing, especially cars.
Biden’s trip to Mexico could have surprising results – especially if he answers questions at a press conference.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who was utilized by Biden to handle the “root causes” of migration last yr, visited Guatemala and Mexico in June 2021 and was greeted by Central American protesters holding a “Trump Won” banner. The trip was overshadowed by Harris’s struggle to elucidate her reluctance to visit the U.S.-Mexico border, which she eventually did a few weeks later.
Biden has not visited the border since taking office, and it is unclear if he ever made a specific visit there during his 50-year political profession. The White House provided reporters with only one example by which Biden “briefly crossed the border” after landing at the El Paso airport in 2008 for an event in Latest Mexico. Biden’s convoy selected “a route that spans the US-Mexico border for several minutes.”