Asked at his morning press conference this Friday from Quintana Roo if the issue had been discussed at yesterday’s high-level meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, he said yes.
The meeting, he added, was very good and revealed that he talked for more than two hours with him, quite a long time, about migration, drug trafficking, economic cooperation and the Secretary also talked for more than half an hour.
And it was a very good meeting with good results, and in the case of the wall we repeated that we do not think it was the solution to the migration problem, that the main thing is to attend to its causes and not only plan coercive measures or walls.
It was ratified, he said, that Biden is the only president who has not built a wall and clarified that the 36 kilometers projected are for an authorization in the budget, which the opposition asks to use in its destination, something that happens in other countries, including Mexico, he explained.
However, he affirmed, “it seems they are not even going to be built and Biden does not want to do it, but they have to comply with the law, even though he does not agree with its construction”.
In this sense, he described the Republican insistence as a publicity measure because we are talking about 3,180 kilometers of border and they started building the wall 40 years ago and they still have a long way to go, he pointed out.
The wall is pure publicity because it does not stop migration, he said and recalled that this issue was not talked about and we did not want it on the agenda, but on one occasion it was mentioned during Donald Trump’s time when the Covid-19 pandemic occurred and we informed him that the border was not going to be closed and we were very grateful that he accepted it. Then we talked when he said that the wall would be paid for by the Mexicans and that he was going to deduct it from remittances and convinced him not to do it.
ef/jav/mgt/lma