Just days after Department of Homeland Security data showed more migrants crossed the southern border last month than in any February before, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador presented President Joe Biden with an outrageous list of demands in exchange for his help stemming the northbound flood.
In an interview with 60 Minutes, Obrador demanded $20 billion a year in aid to Latin America and the Caribbean, an end to the embargo on Cuba, an end to sanctions on Venezuela, and amnesty for all Mexicans living illegally in the United States. Unless Biden agrees, “the flow of migrants will continue,” Obrador said.
Obrador and his socialist allies in Caracas, Havana, and Managua have weaponized mass migration to blackmail America, and Biden is letting them get away with it. No previous president has been so weak or let tiny socialist governments dictate policy like this.
Biden has done nothing but capitulate to Obrador since his first day in office. Not only did he end the successful “Remain in Mexico” policy despised by Obrador, but he stayed silent as Obrador used the Mexican army to consolidate his power, including with the nationalization of airports and trains. Biden allowed Obrador to violate trade agreements by discriminating against American energy producers and he did not defend the Drug Enforcement Agency, which Obrador attacked as “abusive” and “arrogant” after it arrested 28 members of the Sinaloa cartel.
Obrador’s refusal to prosecute the cartels for trafficking people and fentanyl has been particularly harmful to the U.S. Obrador dismantled Mexico’s federal police, creating a new National Guard with orders not to shoot at cartel members. “We take care of the members of the armed forces and the National Guard,” Obrador explained after government forces were seen retreating from cartel gunmen in Nueva Italia. “But we also take care of the members of the gang. They are human beings.”
With Obrador’s cooperation, cartels now control large swaths of Mexico. They fund political campaigns and murder rival political opponents with impunity. Obrador’s “hugs not bullets” approach toward the cartels has increased the flow of fentanyl and its chemical precursors into the United States to its highest ever.
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Obrador is right when he says Mexico is “not a colony” or “protectorate of any foreign country.” He is also right when he notes that Mexico is America’s largest trading partner and this means we depend on his country for cheap cars and other products. But Mexico’s economy is far more dependent on us than vice versa. Mexico’s economy needs not just trade with the United States, but also billions in remittances sent back across the border daily by legal and illegal immigrants.
The U.S. needs a president willing to be tough with Latin American leaders such as Obrador, Nicolas Maduro, Miguel Diaz-Canel, and Daniel Ortega. He should not lift the Cuba embargo and should raise sanctions against Venezuela, not reduce them. If Obrador and his socialist allies complain, Washington should raise taxes on remittances that all of these countries depend on.