WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is holding talks Friday afternoon with Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador as a looming deadline to lift COVID-era restrictions at the U.S. southern border has magnified concerns over the administration's immigration policies and an influx in illegal border crossings.
The conversation — which is expected to touch on cooperation over migration, energy, security and economic growth — comes at the end of a tough week for the White House as it faces mounting criticism over its plans to end Title 42, a public health order allowing border agents to expel asylum-seekers to Mexico. Enacted during the Trump administration, officials said Title 42 was needed to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Earlier this week a federal judge halted the Department of Homeland Security's plans to suspend the order on May 23 while a growing number of Democrats up for reelection have joined Republicans in criticizing the administration's plans to wind down the policy. Republicans grilled Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Capitol Hill over a record number of border crossings that reached 210,000 arrests in March, the highest monthly total in two decades.
