Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said President Joe Biden’s migration policies and rhetoric sparked “expectations” that created the U.S.-Mexico border crisis.
“Expectations were created that with the government of President Biden, there would be a better treatment of migrants. And this has caused Central American migrants, and also from our country, wanting to cross the border, thinking that it is easier to do so,” López Obrador said on Tuesday shortly after Mexican Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval sent thousands of troops to the border.
👆AMLO brings up repeatedly the principle of “non-intervention” in other countries’ domestic affairs so that no one meddles in Mexico. The statement above shows how little is AMLO versed in the nuances of US politics & how the “non-intervention” principle is relatively malleable
— José Díaz Briseño (@diazbriseno) March 23, 2021
At the beginning of March, López Obrador told reporters that many of those suddenly eager to undertake the dangerous journey across the southern U.S. border illegally view Biden as “the migrant president” because of his rhetoric.
Mexican officials also expressed remorse that Biden repealed former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies after the Republican “strong-armed Mexico into militarizing the border” and may have “lessened their load” by stopping migrants from crossing.
Earlier this week, an illegal immigrant in Tucson, Arizona, told ABC’s Martha Raddatz that he recently chose to cross the southern U.S. border because Joe Biden is president and not former President Donald Trump.
“Would you have tried to do this when Donald Trump was president?” Raddatz asked.
“Definitely not. Definitely,” said one migrant father at a Catholic charity shelter. “We have a chance, you know. That the same violence that is going on today wasn’t there last year. We used to watch the news, and I definitely wouldn’t do this.”
“So did you come here because Joe Biden was elected president?” Raddatz pressed.
“Basically. Basically,” the father replied. “The main thing was the violence in our country. And the second thing, I think, was Joe Biden.”
