Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Tuesday he wants centers for handling asylum claims to be set up in migrants’ countries of origin instead of Mexico, and will discuss it with regional leaders at a summit later this month.
Lopez Obrador is due to host leaders from Latin America in Palenque in the southern border state of Chiapas on Oct. 22 for talks aimed at tackling a recent spike in migration.
In July, the Mexican government said it was considering setting up a facility for migrants in the south of the country, but Lopez Obrador said he wanted to discuss the matter first with his Latin American counterparts during the Chiapas summit.
“We don’t want to set up migrant places in our country for them to wait to be given (U.S.) temporary visas,” he said. “We want this to be where the migration originates, where the migrants come from, so they don’t need to come to Mexico.”
Speaking at a regular government press conference, Lopez Obrador said he wanted to reach a deal with the other countries.
A recent sharp increase in migrants’ traveling up through Central America into Mexico and onto the U.S. border has put renewed pressure on both Lopez Obrador and the Biden administration to find ways of containing the flow of people.
Lopez Obrador said this week that he had invited the presidents of Ecuador, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Venezuela, Cuba, Costa Rica and Panama, as well as the leaders of Haiti and Belize, to talk part in the Chiapas talks.
Source : Reuters