Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is warning that the influx of illegal immigrants at the U.S. border will persist unless the Biden government increases aid for Central and South American nations. Obrador made his comments during an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday. The Mexican leader added that the U.S. government would also need to lift sanctions on both Venezuela and Cuba.
The founder of the left-wing populist political party Morena, Obrador has used the U.S. border crisis to lobby the Biden government on a range of measures, including an annual $20 billion aid package for Latin American countries and offering amnesty to unauthorized immigrant workers in the U.S. Obrador first raised the issues of aid, work visas, and sanctions in January following a meeting with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Mexico City.
When pressed if he would step up efforts to curb the flow of illegal immigrants heading the U.S. border, Obrador responded via an interpreter, stating: “We do, and want to continue doing it. But we do want for the root causes to be attended to, for them to be seriously looked at.” The Mexican President told CBS that if the Biden government did not meet his demands, “The flow of migrants will continue.”
The U.S. border crisis has strained relations between the Biden government and Mexico. In February, Obrador demanded a formal apology from President Joe Biden after the non-profit group ProPublica accused the Mexican leader of accepting campaign donations from drug cartels. Obrador has also criticized the Biden government for their lawfare campaign against former President Donald Trump, calling the federal charges against him a “fabrication.”