Mexican President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador issued a lengthy series of demands detailing what the U.S. must offer in exchange for Mexico’s help in stemming the flow of migrants to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Lopez Obrador’s demands came during a Friday press conference, which came roughly a week after he met with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Mexico City in late December. The U.S. officials requested that Mexico boost its assistance in stopping illegal immigration.
Lopez Obrador responded by demanding the U.S. give $20 billion to Latin American and Caribbean countries, grant work visas to 10 million Hispanics who have worked in the U.S. for at least 10 years, end sanctions against Venezuela and halt the blockade of Cuba.
The negotiations come at a critical time for President Biden, whose polling numbers on illegal immigration have been low throughout his presidency. The U.S. also suffered a surge of migrants at the border this fall, with roughly 240,000 monthly migrant encounters at the border in late 2023.
A senior Biden administration official responded to those demands in a statement to NBC News, saying Lopez Obrador “has a very ambitious agenda. For some of these things, we would need Congress to act. We share the vision that we need to lift up the region.”
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