Barbs fly from Mexico leader, but migration deal stays above the fray
The Mexican leader’s barbs have left the Biden administration in an awkward place. U.S. lawmakers are clamoring for more pressure on López Obrador over trade disputes, drug trafficking and democratic backsliding. But the Biden administration has made López Obrador a bulwark of its strategy to curb illegal border crossings, depending on him to take back tens of thousands of migrants every month from nations that don’t accept U.S. deportees.
Biden will soon need Mexico’s assistance more than ever. The White House has set May 11 as the expiration date for the pandemic-era emergency border controls known as Title 42 that U.S. authorities have used since March 2020 to expel nearly 3 million migrants. Fearing a new surge, Biden officials are trying to negotiate a breakthrough accord with López Obrador that would allow them to deport Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who cross from Mexico back across the border.
U.S. lawmakers who met with López Obrador this month in Mexico City said they don’t believe his willingness to help the United States with immigration enforcement is at risk, despite recent tensions. Mexico can’t handle a huge increase in migrants, they say, and knows border chaos is bad for trade.
López Obrador’s cooperation on migration also seems to afford him more leverage over more contentious issues in the relationship, including the fight against Mexican drug cartels. Former president Donald Trump used the threat of tariffs in 2019 to bully López Obrador into a military crackdown on migrants, but Mexico appears more comfortable with the previous era of bilateral diplomacy when sticky issues like trade and security could be treated separately.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), one of a dozen lawmakers who met with López Obrador for several hours on March 19, said it was “crystal clear that President López Obrador’s government wanted us to view migration as a shared challenge, not as a source of friction.”
“I think they view this issue differently than they view energy or trade or agriculture, because they don’t see this as a zero-sum game,” Murphy said in an interview.
Mexican officials had “detailed Power Points” showing a sharp reduction in the number of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans crossing into the United States illegally as a result of a new U.S.-Mexico enforcement deal the two nations announced Jan. 5, Murphy said.
Under that accord, Mexico is allowing U.S. authorities to return up to 30,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela per month if they attempt to cross into the United States illegally from Mexico. Biden officials committed to allowing the same number of migrants to enter the United States legally through a program known as “parole” that requires them to have a U.S. sponsor and complete an online application.
López Obrador has long insisted tougher border measures should be paired with expanded pathways for migrants to work in the United States legally.
“They are very proud of the success of the parole program,” Murphy said. “I think they’re feeling good about the results of cooperation with the United States on migration policy.”
The United States and Mexico hammered out the deal after illegal border crossings reached record levels in December. The influx was led by migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela transiting through Mexico en route to the U.S. border.
Strained relations between the United States and the leftist governments of those nations severely limit the U.S.'s ability to carry out deportation flights. Biden officials say Mexico’s willingness to take back many of the border-crossers it can’t return to Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela has slashed illegal migration from the four countries by more than 90 percent over the past two months.
The Mexico report from the State Department’s human rights bureau described credible reports of arbitrary killings, torture and forced disappearances by security forces, arbitrary arrests or detention, restrictions on free expression and media, “serious acts of government corruption” and “insufficient investigation of and accountability for gender-based violence,” among other concerns. López Obrador dismissed the findings as the work of a “departamentito” (“little office”) inside the U.S. State Department.
Mexican government’s own reported seizures of the precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl belie López Obrador’s claims the drug is produced elsewhere. U.S. officials did not respond to his musings about the Nord Stream pipeline, but the Biden administration has denied any role in the sabotage.
Several Republican lawmakers have been calling for U.S. military strikes in Mexico against criminal groups and traffickers, following the March 3 killing of two U.S. citizens who crossed into the border city of Matamoros. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) told Fox News he would propose legislation to designate certain cartels as foreign terrorist organizations to “set the stage to use military force, if necessary.”
“I would tell the Mexican government, ‘If you don’t clean up your act, we’re going to clean it up for you,’” Graham said.
López Obrador has denounced those statements, saying Mexico is not a U.S. “colony,” while threatening to help campaign against the Republican Party in next year’s U.S. elections. The Mexican leader’s combative response was a departure from the conciliatory way he handled Trump’s coercive tactics in 2019.
López Obrador, also known by his initials AMLO, dominates Mexico’s daily news cycle with a televised morning news conference, the mañanera, allowing him to fire away at domestic and foreign critics. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), who was part of the U.S. congressional delegation that met with López Obrador, said the Mexican leader takes a more pragmatic approach behind closed doors.
“Like some other personalities we’ve seen in politics, when you attack President López Obrador, his first instinct is to punch back,” Cornyn said in an interview. “In private, outside of the glare of the TV cameras and lights, he seems like a more sensible person. But he doesn’t like it when you attack him or Mexico.”
Though López Obrador is a veteran of the Latin American left, his populist style and flair for combat often draw comparisons to Trump. Among his other notable recent statements was a remark siding with the former U.S. president that appeared to endorse Trump’s claim that his rivals are trying to prevent him from retaking the White House next year.
“If that’s the case, it’s obvious to everyone — because we’re not suckers — that they’re trying to keep his name off the ballot,” López Obrador said.
Shannon O’Neil, a Mexico expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said López Obrador had an easier time with Trump because he showed little interest in other issues besides migration enforcement. Biden’s team has a “broader agenda,” she said.
“They care about democratic checks and balances, and U.S. companies in Mexico,” O’Neil said. “None of those things mattered to Trump.”
López Obrador will be barred from running for reelection when his six-year term expires next year. The Morena party he founded remains favored to win but has yet to name a candidate. O’Neil said López Obrador will bring a bigger dose of Mexican nationalism as the election approaches.
“I think you’ll see more mañanera (morning press conferences) with López Obrador ‘standing up to the United States,’ but it’ll be more rhetoric than reality,” O’Neil said. “His rhetoric will likely continue down this path, but I’m more skeptical that it’ll mean actual changes on the ground for Mexican migration policy, security policy or economic policy.”
Andrew Selee, the president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, said López Obrador has shown himself to be “rhetorically ambitious but politically cautious when it comes to the relationship with the United States.”
“The worst thing that can happen for López Obrador is to end up in a diplomatic crisis with the U.S. government that has economic consequences right before the (2024) election. And the worst thing for Biden would be a diplomatic crisis with Mexico right as the United States is transitioning away from Title 42,” he said.
López Obrador built his political career as a defender of migrants and a harsh critic of U.S. immigration policy, telling crowds during his third campaign for Mexico’s presidency in 2018 that he wouldn’t do the “dirty work” of U.S. immigration enforcement. Once in office, he came under pressure from Trump to crack down.
Polls have shown many Mexicans also want their country to tighten migration controls. Selee said López Obrador found little political downside to helping the United States control the flow of migrants across the border. But if cooperation on border enforcement became more politically sensitive, he added, “all bets are off.”
López Obrador has increasingly framed the U.S. pressure on his government over other issues as an affront to Mexico’s independence.
“The word that keeps coming up in conversations with the Mexican leadership is sovereignty,” Cornyn said. “But sovereignty is a two-way street. They need to respect our sovereignty and our ability to protect Americans from either the impact of mass migration or these illegal drugs.
“This is clearly a relationship that needs more attention,” said Cornyn, who told López Obrador at one point the United States and Mexico “were like an old married couple.”
“We have to make the marriage work because we can’t get a divorce,” Cornyn said. “He laughed at that.”
Kevin Sieff in Mexico City contributed to this report.
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