MEXICO CITY – Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has become an unlikely ally of former US President Donald Trump’s migration policies, deploying thousands of troops to Mexico to stop asylum seekers in Central America heading for the 2,000-mile border .
Now, President Biden is preparing to undo much of Mr. Trump’s immigration legacy, while also facing differences with the Mexican populist over a number of other bilateral issues, such as security cooperation and climate change.
Cooperation with the Mexican president, despite these differences, will be crucial to managing the immigration problem, say political and political analysts. Mr Biden has promised a review of immigration to provide citizenship for 11 million undocumented migrants, almost half of them Mexicans.
He also wants to end the asylum eligibility restrictions implemented during the Trump years and end a program that required about 70,000 asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their proceedings are tried in the United States. .
The policy change, which the administration says will result in a more humane migration system, has a potential disadvantage: if done too quickly, it could lead to an increase in migrants, which could prove politically disastrous. for Mr. Biden, analysts say.