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Furious Republicans claim the Biden administration is being “held hostage” and exploited by Mexico after President Andrés Manuel López Obrador demanded billions of dollars in exchange for helping stem the flow of migrants into the US. In a 60 Minutes interview last weekend, the Mexican president said he would work with his northern neighbor to crack down on immigration if Mexico-U.S. met his demands.
He wanted the U.S. to donate $20 billion annually to countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, to lift sanctions on Venezuela, to lift the embargo on Cuba, and to allow law-abiding Mexicans living illegally in the U.S. would receive citizenship. López Obrador said “the flow of migrants will continue” if the US does not meet his requests.
In response, Republicans labeled López Obrador’s demands as bribery and condemned Biden for putting him in charge of U.S. foreign policy. “The President of Mexico says they will continue to invade our country until we pay the bribes,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., wrote on X Monday. “This is a war,” she added. “He’s basically saying we comply with his demands or the invasion will continue.”
“Now the President of Mexico is demanding bribes to ‘stop the invasion’ and not even stop it,” she said in another post. Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Texas, similarly posted on X: “When Trump was president, Mexico helped us fight the Mexican cartels and stop massive illegal immigration.” “But now our country is being held hostage and Mexico is demanding bribes because Biden is happy to sell out US border security.”
“I met Obrador, he is a fool and a bully. We need a real leader in the White House to confront him.” Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., also weighed in. “Mexican President Obrador placed 25,000 of his own soldiers on Mexico’s southern border to stop migration and supported Trump’s policy to remain in Mexico.” “Now he’s dictating border policy to Biden!”
But López Obrador’s demands are not new. The Mexican president presented a similar request in January ahead of the meeting with Biden. “Mexico is helping to reach agreements with other countries, in this case Venezuela,” he said at the time. “We have already proposed to President Biden that he open a bilateral dialogue between the US and Cuba.”
The Mexican president also said he wanted the US to issue visas to at least 10 million Spanish-speaking migrants who have lived in the US for 10 years or more. He also presented a plan to deploy $20 billion to help Mexico and Central American countries tackle the root causes of migration. After leftist López Obrador was elected in 2018, his administration and then-President Donald Trump worked together to enact immigration reforms such as the Migrant Protection Protocols, known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy.
The policy required immigrants awaiting a hearing in U.S. immigration court to remain outside the country until their hearing. It was widely credited with reducing immigration to the US from Mexico and other Latin American countries. On Biden’s first day in office, he signed an executive order ending the program.