MEXICO CITY (CN) — High-ranking U.S. and Mexican officials discussed migration for the first time during the third annual High-Level Security Dialogue in Mexico City Thursday.
“We have witnessed historic levels of migration,” Mexican Foreign Secretary Alicia Bárcena said during a press conference following the meeting. “The world is facing historic massive human mobility.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Mexican Public Security Secretary Rosa Icela Rodríguez also attended the meeting, among other officials from both countries.
“Our two countries are being challenged by an unprecedented level of migration throughout our hemisphere,” Mayorkas said. “The United States is committed to continuing to work closely with Mexico as we implement a model that pairs a historic expansion of safe, orderly and lawful pathways for migrants to come directly to the United States or elsewhere to obtain humanitarian relief outside the grip of smugglers.”
While no new efforts to address migration came out of Thursday’s talks, Mayorkas noted an announcement by the Biden administration earlier in the day that the U.S. will resume repatriation flights of Venezuelan nationals who do not take advantage of lawful pathways.
The announcement came after the Biden administration said in September that it would grant temporary protected status to over 470,000 Venezuelan nationals who arrived in the United States before July 31.
The high-level dialogues began in October 2021, when officials committed to taking a more “holistic” approach to public safety. A political officer from the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City told Courthouse News ahead of that meeting that migration was not a public safety issue.
Mayorkas also announced a new effort to combat the flow of illicit firearms from the United States to Mexico, consisting of monthly reports “of the movement of firearms or the intended movement of firearms to the south.”
The reports will “track the progress of our interdiction efforts [and] facilitate and enhance our joint operations and investigations.”
Garland underscored the importance of the issue to U.S. officials, saying they “well understand the dangers of the military-grade weapons that are being trafficked to Mexico,” adding that they are a “serious danger” to both countries.
Interceptions of U.S.-sold firearms en route to Mexico have increased 44% over the last 12 months, Mayorkas said, which has doubled figures of seizures from the previous year.
Despite multiple statements that the two countries are deepening and broadening efforts to combat drug and arms trafficking, officials appeared unable to agree on one major facet of the problem: where fentanyl is produced.
Rodríguez appeared to contradict Blinken just after he said that the two countries have cooperated to dismantle clandestine drug labs, saying “Mexico is not a producer of fentanyl.”
After a reporter asked her to clarify, she said that “there is not a contradiction in the position” of the two countries.
In a confused answer, she attempted to explain that Mexico does not produce the precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl and said that drug labs in the country “in the majority of cases” produce methamphetamine. She also said that “no laboratory in Mexico is legally producing fentanyl.”
Security experts confirmed to Courthouse News that fentanyl is indeed being produced in Mexico and attributed her statement to a narrative that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has attempted to disseminate.
“It’s a media strategy, but it doesn’t convince anyone,” said security analyst David Saucedo.
Analyst Alberto Guerrero Baena said he believes that Rodríguez is being used as a kind of shield against criticism of the armed forces, which have come under fire recently for allegedly blocking the investigation into the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa teachers’ college students in 2014.
Rodríguez's statement may have revealed a rift in the López Obrador administration, as Foreign Secretary Bárcena said immediately after her confused answer that “obviously there are no legal fentanyl labs in Mexico, but there are illegal labs, and that’s where we’ve done seizures.”
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