Secretary of State Antony Blinken and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas were in Mexico this week for emergency meetings on the immigration crisis.
NTD spoke to Laura Ries, director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation. She highlighted the United States’ desire for Mexico’s assistance in reducing the surge of illegal immigrants, but not stopping it. Ms. Ries expressed skepticism about the meeting’s success, and pointed out that the American delegation did not hold a press conference afterward. She suggested that the Biden administration may be “going through the motions” with the meetings.
“This is about bad optics for the Biden administration, because they’ve had repeated days of encounters at 10,000 illegal aliens, or even higher—and that’s historic,” she said.
Ms. Ries also noted Mexico’s push for improved relations with Venezuela and Cuba as a solution to the so-called root causes of the immigration issue. However, she emphasized the need to address “pull factors” drawing people to the United States, such as granting work permits to illegal immigrants.
“They could have stopped this long ago and they haven’t,” she said.
Illegal immigrants “are released into the U.S. and … are able to work, even though the law prohibits illegal aliens from working here. Nonetheless, the Biden administration does give work permits—and that’s the biggest pull factor there is,” said Ms. Ries.
