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Top US, Mexico diplomats meet in Washington amid migrant crisis
WASHINGTON, Dec 3, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Mexico’s new Foreign Minister Marcelo
Ebrard met with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sunday for what he
called a “friendly” meeting amid tensions over the migrant crisis at the
border.
The talks came one day after Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took office as
Mexico’s new president.
“Friendly conversation as a first approach towards a long standing
understanding between Mexico and the USA,” Ebrard said on Twitter.
“I thank him for his attitude and respect towards the new administration
of President Lopez Obrador.”
Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO for short, is a leftist who was sworn in on
Saturday, five months after a landslide election win.
On Sunday, Pompeo and Ebrard discussed a “shared commitment to address our
common challenges and opportunities for the future,” according to State
Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert.
The two countries are grappling with how to handle the thousands of
Central American migrants who are camped at the common border — in the short
and long terms.
President Donald Trump is pressuring Lopez Obrador to accept a deal to
keep asylum-seeking migrants in Mexico while their claims are processed in
the United States.
Last week, Ebrard said he would like to see a sort of “Marshall Plan” to
foster development in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, akin to what the
United States did to help rebuild Europe after World War II.
Ebrard said such a plan would help shrink the number of migrants fleeing
violence and poverty in their home countries and heading to the United
States.
– New shelter in Tijuana for migrants –
On Sunday, officials in the Mexican border city of Tijuana shut down a
makeshift shelter in a sports complex housing migrants, citing unsanitary
conditions, and moved them to a different facility.
Of the original 6,000 migrants who had massed in the city, only about
2,000 went to the new center, a city official told AFP.
Cold temperatures and driving rain made conditions in the open-air shelter
too difficult.
Another 500 remained near the original site, fearing the move was a
precursor to being deported, and were sleeping in the streets, the official
said.
The whereabouts of the rest were not known.
The migrants, most of them from gang-plagued Honduras, had travelled for
weeks hoping to reach the United States.
A week ago, US authorities fired tear gas and rubber bullets at about 500
migrants including women and children who had tried to breach the US-Mexico
border.
The confrontation prompted hundreds of migrants to either head home or
seek to remain in Mexico.
BSS/AFP/MSY/1230 hrs