This week, Mexico’s president said that he turned down a request from the United States to open processing centers for migrants in Mexico. A station like this has been set up in Guatemala, which is nearby, so people can apply for work and refugee visas to come to the United States.
Although a lot of people come to the U.S. from Mexico, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has so far turned down a request to build sites there, saying that he would rather have these kinds of centers in countries that send people to other countries.
According to Lopez Obrador, he will bring up the topic during a gathering of Latin American presidents that he is hosting later this month, speculating that the nations would settle on a shared strategy for such locations.
As a result of requests from the US, we have been considering establishing locations in Mexico, according to López Obrador. “We haven’t agreed to it; we want to speak with the presidents first,” the speaker was alluding to the meeting that will take place with the leaders of 11 nations that are involved in migrant routes.
Palenque, a city in southern Mexico, is where the meeting will take place. Countries including Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, and Belize are anticipated to be present.
In Guatemala, U.S.-funded migrant transit facilities have been established to process applications from nationals of Central America for work permits, family reunifications, in addition to refugee status.
The refugee centers are part of a bigger plan to cut down on the number of people coming to the United States from Latin America as well as the Caribbean.
In the end, applications will be accepted at eight locations around Guatemala at the times designated for their appointments.
The large number of refugees has made things tense between the US and Mexico.
Due to the high number of migrants assembled on the border, the Mexican government complained in a diplomatic communication to the US this week about the suspension of several freight or railway border crossings.
Mexico also complained about Texas’s truck checks, which have made crossing the border very slow. López Obrador said that Governor Greg Abbott of Texas was “very irresponsible” and acting for political reasons when he decided to require more truck checks.
The National Freight Transport Chamber of Mexico stated that 19,000 trucks were held up at the border. The freight group said the trucks that were late were bringing goods worth $1.9 billion.
The Texas Dept. of Public Safety said that it had begun “enhanced commercial vehicle safety checks” in the area near El Paso and Del Rio, Texas, with the goal of detecting unsafe vehicles and “deterring the transport of migrants along with other smuggling activity.”
