Joe Biden begins his first visit to Mexico, under the sign of migrants and Fentanyl

Europe 1 with AFP 5:34 p.m., January 8, 2023

Joe Biden begins his first official visit to Mexico on Sunday with the nagging question of record migration and overdoses by the thousands in the United States due to Fentanyl, a synthetic drug produced by Mexican cartels, on the agenda.

The US president will begin his visit to Mexico, a fundamental partner of Washington, with a stop at the border town of El Paso, in southern Texas, to silence the reproaches of his adversaries for never having set foot on the 3,100 km of common border in two years of mandate.

A Tripartite Summit United States, Mexico and Canada

He will travel to Mexico City on Monday to meet his Mexican counterpart Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador with whom he will participate in a tripartite summit with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday.

"Mexico is extremely relevant to address these two acute problems, which have become political vulnerabilities for Biden", judge with AFP Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue institute.

At a time when some 2.3 million arrests and deportation measures for undocumented immigrants have been taken in 2022, Biden must show his firmness if he decides to stand for a second term.

Before going to El Paso, he has already announced a program that will allow up to 30,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to legally enter the United States each month.

This new quota applies to legal workers who have a sponsor in the United States, those entering illegally still risk deportation.

>> READ ALSO

- United States: what will be the role of the new speaker Kevin McCarthy, now number 3 in the country?

Faced with more than 230,000 arrests of illegal candidates recorded in November at the southern border of the United States, a record level, Joe Biden knows the limits of his program and criticizes the Republicans for blocking a more ambitious plan.

The tragedy of Fentanyl, a synthetic drug

The bilateral meeting will also be marked by the tragedy of Fentanyl, a synthetic drug 50 times more potent than heroin, whose production and trafficking are controlled by Mexican cartels with chemical precursors from China, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Nearly two-thirds of the 108,000 overdose deaths recorded in the United States in 2021 involved synthetic opioids.

And the amount of fentanyl seized in 2022 alone is more than would be needed to kill the entire US population, according to the DEA.

The United States seeks to "expand information sharing" with Mexico on precursors and to "strengthen prevention", said the head of American diplomacy for Latin America, Brian Nichols.

And ahead of Biden's arrival, Mexico on Thursday captured Ovidio Guzman, one of the biggest meth traffickers in an operation that left 10 law enforcement officers dead and 19 among members of the Sinaloa gang.

Change of approach in anti-drug policy

"When there are these kinds of meetings, one constant is that the Mexican authorities always have something to offer, sooner or later," said security expert Ricardo Marquez, according to whom this arrest does not affect the structure of the Sinaloa Cartel, whose networks span 50 countries.

However, the United States and Mexico announced in 2021 a change of approach in their anti-drug policy, focusing on the causes of trafficking after 15 years of purely military strategy.

Since 2006, 340,000 people have died violently in Mexico and thousands more have gone missing, without the cartels having been weakened.

In the midst of this bloodbath, the Mexican government has filed two lawsuits against the arms industry in the United States, which it accuses of fueling the violence of drug traffickers on its territory.

>> READ ALSO

- United States: Joe Biden condemns "political violence", two years after the assault on the Capitol

A $48 billion renewable energy project

Climate change will also be on the agenda, with the two countries announcing at COP 27 a $48 billion renewable energy investment project in which Mexico has pledged to extend its gas reduction targets to greenhouse effect by 2030.

Lithium mining, relocation of electric vehicle assembly plants, construction of six solar energy plants on the Mexican side intend to articulate with the semiconductor cluster under construction in Arizona, as part of Washington's strategy to reduce its dependence on Asia for the manufacture of electronic components.