MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s top diplomat for North America is calling on the U.S. to do “a better job” of managing rising immigration by, in part, creating more legal pathways into the U.S. for migrants who otherwise face an increasingly perilous journey at the hands of organized crime.
The number of migrants caught by U.S. Border Patrol hit a high of nearly 1.7 million in the last fiscal year — compared to about 400,000 the previous year when the pandemic started. In January, Border Patrol apprehensions nearly doubled to 147,000 from about 75,000 in the previous year.
Authorities in the U.S. and Mexico are bracing for an even greater influx as the weather gets warmer and the coronavirus pandemic continues to disrupt Latin American economies, sending people on the move in search of work and stability. In Mexico, with cartel-related violence sweeping across much of the country, a new wave of migration to the U.S. has quickly been growing.
