Mexico

Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, associate professor in George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government and global fellow in the Wilson Center’s Latin America Program, leads a conversation on the future of U.S.-Mexico relations.   CASA: Welcome to today’s session of the CFR Fall 2021 Academic Webinar Series. I am Maria Casa, director of the National Program and Outreach at CFR. Thank you all for joining us. Today’s discussion is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/academic if you would like to share it with your colleagues or classmates. As always CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We are delighted to have Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera with us to discuss the future of U.S.-Mexico relations. Dr. Correa-Cabrera is associate professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and global fellow in the Latin America Program at the Wilson Center. She also serves as nonresident scholar at the Center for the United States and Mexico in Rice University’s Baker Institute, is a fellow at Small Wars Journal-El Centro, and is co-editor of the International Studies Perspectives Journal. Previously Dr. Correa-Cabrera was principal investigator of a research grant to study organized crime and trafficking in persons in Central America and Mexico, supported by the U.S. Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. She is past president of the Association for Borderland Studies and the author of several books. Welcome, Guadalupe. CORREA-CABRERA: Thank you, Maria. CASA: Thank you very much for speaking with us today. CORREA-CABRERA: Thank you, Maria. Thank you very much to everyone, especially the Council on Foreign Relations, for the opportunity to talk to you about the relationships of my two countries, the United States and Mexico. So today, I’m going to start by explaining what is the current state of Mexico-U.S. relations, but in the context of a very important event that took place some days ago, in the context of the U.S.-Mexico Bicentennial Framework for Security, Public Health, and Safe Communities. The bicentennial—so-called Bicentennial Understanding. There was a concern at the beginning of the current administration in the United States that the relationships between the United States and Mexico were going to be difficult. Notwithstanding the last, the current year has been extremely productive in many areas. And with this new understanding, the Bicentennial Understanding, that it states in the Bicentennial Framework for Security, Public Health, and Safe Communities, the United States and Mexico’s relation has been reframed in a very important way. There is an understanding that the Mérida initiative that had been the center of the relationship between the United States and Mexico, focused on security, needed to be reframed. And then, you know, that was—that was considered that the priorities remained the same, the priorities of the two countries, with some changes that I’m going to be talking about. But the three—I mean, the high-level understanding, this high-level meeting told us what’s supposed to be—I mean, where we’re going to see in the future. So I just wanted to point out some of the points that were discussed. This framework was informed by each country’s security priorities, that I’m going to be talking about. And the focus is addressing violence, but through a response that’s driven by justice and use of intelligence against organized crime, and based on tactical cooperation in law enforcement, based on the previous mistakes that had been identified. But currently, the focus would be on public health and development as a part of the strategy of cooperation between the two countries. I’m taking some words from the—from the communique of this understanding. And, you know, with the consideration of—for a more secure and prosperous region, the Mexico-U.S. Bicentennial Framework serves to reaffirm the friendship and cooperation that exists between the two nations. You know, as you see, the language is very friendly. It’s based on an understanding that the relationship is important, cooperation is important. Apparently the two countries are in the same boat in this regard. The United States recognizes that support of militarization is not the way probably to go. And a greater focus on public health and development to address the root causes of violence in the southern hemisphere, particularly in Mexico, is probably the way to go, with an understanding to promote a more secure and prosperous region. There are four themes—I mean, this is the idea. This was—I mean, that was the conversation that’s on the table. We don’t necessarily know ourselves today how this is going to be implemented, what are the particular policies that—or, the collaboration, or the amounts of money to make this happen. But this is kind of like the idea of the future of this collaboration. However, I am going to be talking about the opportunities, and particularly the challenges, considering the priorities of the two nations that, in a way, and when we have the meetings of this type, and when we listen to the language and read the media and talk to the politicians that were present, we have a sense. But then when everybody goes home, we kind of, like, think about this better and we see opportunities, but more challenges than we initially thought. So there are four main things in the United States-Mexico relations that need to be highlighted, plus one that has been also always important but today is more important due to the pandemic. Which is the theme of public health, where an important collaboration between Mexico and the United States has been observed but at the same time poses certain challenges with regard to the border management. Title 42 is still in place and the borders are going to be opened gradually, considering, you know, the vaccination status of people. But that has had a major impact on border communities, and certain impacts on trade and development, particularly at the U.S.-Mexico border. The other four main themes of U.S. Mexico relations that I want to talk about are immigration, security, trade, and energy. I mean, I don’t want to place them in order of priority. I think that energy is going to define the future of Mexico-U.S. relations, but I’m going to mention the four in the context of the present—I mean, the present situation. So with regards to trade, the successful passage and, you know, implementation of renegotiation of NAFTA, today in the shape of USMCA, has been extremely successful. Poses some challenges, of course. And this is going to be connected with the last subject we’ll be talking about, the proposal of the Mexican government to reform the electricity sector. This is something that is going to be very, very important, and what are the priorities of the United States in the framework of build back better? But with regards to trade, apparently their relationships could not be, you know, better than today. There are some challenges, of course, that have to be with labor rights and unions in Mexico that would cause some loss of competitiveness in the manufacturing sector. And in the framework build back better, of course, this is going to benefit the United States and it’s going probably to affect the manufacturing sector of Mexico. Let’s see how it works. But with regards to trade, things are mainly, you know, stable, with exception of the future. And this is going to be very, very important. The potential passage, we don’t really know, it’s very difficult that the electricity reform in Mexico will pass. But anyway, the president—the current president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has a very important amount of—I mean, segment of the population, and a very important support from his base that might help him to achieve his goal. I see it very differently, but we’ll talk about that. So the next area that I would like to talk about is immigration. Here we have enormous challenges, enormous challenges that have been visualized with, you know, the current situations at the border that started since the beginning of this administration. During the past years, I mean, they had started to be increasing in magnitude, or at least in visibility. As I mentioned, Title 42 is maintained, and the migration protection protocol—Migrant Protection Protocols, so Stay in Mexico program, where a number of asylum seekers would have to wait for their cases to be decided in Mexico, there’s a new definition in this framework. The Supreme Court of the United States very recently made a decision with regards to the reinstatement of the Migrant Protection Protocols. In the beginning the Department of Homeland Security, you know, made the declaration that they would—they would continue with that, but very recently they intention is not to continue with the Migrant Protection Protocols. In the end, and this is why this is very important in the very current conversation, in the end the continuation of this—of this program that has been highly criticized. Then it’s also—it has put the human rights of undocumented migrants and asylum seekers at risk. That might—this will not work if Mexico—if the government of Mexico does not accept it. We have to see what is going to be the result. But we have a definition in this regard. The role of Mexico is key in the management of the U.S.-Mexico border, in the management of what some call migrant crisis, and then a crisis at the border. We observed that crisis very recently with a number of Haitian citizens that all left their country, went to South America, and from South America—from countries such as Ecuador, Brazil, Chile—traveled north through different countries, finding different challenges and dangers, and arrived to one point of the U.S.-Mexico border, with the help of a number of actors, such as migrant smugglers and corrupt authorities, but with the aim of making—I mean, escaping a terrible life and making a better life in the United States. We have a caravan that’s now in direction to Mexico City. They were going go—they will put their demands on the table, but their intent is to continue going to the United States. There is a very big definition with regards to the migrant crisis, or what some call the migrant crisis, and the immigration issues that the government of the United States has recognized very accurately, and the Mexican government too, that there need to be collaboration to address the root causes of the situation that has to do with the development of the countries of Central America, of South America. And, you know, to achieve stability in South America, probably not through militarization. Secretary Blinken in a very surprising statement has led us to believe that today the United States is also reframing its aid to Latin America, to Central America and the Caribbean. And the focus is not going to be in aid in military equipment or in the militarization of the region. This is very important. And this brings me to talk about the third important—the third theme in the U.S.-Mexico relations. Mexico’s security—the relationship of Mexico and the United States in the past few years has been focused on this connection between security and immigration. That’s in the end centered on a specific attention of border enforcement, of border security cooperation. The situation in Mexico has deteriorated in the past few years, and the situation has not improved in an important way. Mexico’s homicides remained at high levels, despite the pandemic. During the pandemic the decrease was very small, but today and we expect that this year the homicide rate continues growing in a trend that does not seem to be going down. The approach of the Mexican government since the transition period was—I mean, I can be summarized in the phrase talks not bullets. Which means, like, a completely—I mean, a complete shift of the declaration of Mexico’s war on drugs to some other, like, approaches that will focus as well to solve the root causes of violence insecurity in Mexico, mainly development frameworks. However, the prior militarization of criminal groups in different parts of the country, and the events—the shootings and the diversification of criminal activities by armed groups in the country—has also caused a very complicated situation. The count of homicides in Mexico shows that killings remain essentially unchanged, more than 36,000 homicides in the year 2020. As I mentioned before, this year we expect an important increase. I don’t know what will be the magnitude, but we have observed since the beginning of the year very unfortunate events. For example, at the U.S.-Mexico border, in the city of Reynosa, the massacre of migrants, and also assassinations and disappearances in a very key highway of Mexico from Nuevo Laredo and Monterrey. We still remember the Culiacanazo in the year 2019, which was a very complicated year. And today the situation in states like Michoacán, Guerrero, and Sinaloa, the massacres that be found, and people who disappear—or, that remain disappeared, is a very big concern, both to Mexico and the United States. There is not really an understanding of how this collaboration with regards to security will be framed. However, there was a very big advancement in the Bicentennial Understanding initial talks that the Mérida Initiative, at least on paper, supposed to be ending. But there’s going to be a focus on dismantling transnational criminal organizations, probably in a different way and not with a focus on the military sector or on armed forces. At least, this is what we have on the paper. Mexico has been very straightforward with regards—and very critical with regards to the role of the DEA. And that has caused several tensions in this relationship. We also have the issue of security and the—I mean, the priorities of the United States with regards to build back better proposal or reform. And then we have, as I said, the reform of the electric sector in the Mexico state, who want to recover the control of the management of electricity, of the electricity market, and the capacity of the state to manage the lithium. So Mexico has—and the Mexican government has three main projects: the construction of the refinery in—the Dos Bocas in Tabasco, the Santa Lucia airport, and the Maya Train. There is a tension between Mexico and the United States with regards to priorities. Mexico has a priority to continue with the support of oil and gas. This is—this is reflected in the construction of the refinery. And here, we’re probably going to see the main point of tension. Because of build back better and the commitment with build back better, and also focus on U.S. internal markets where Mexico has been benefitting from the growth of its manufacturing sector. We don’t really know how this is going to be playing out, but at least, you know, on paper things are going to be good. But definitely the priorities with regards to energy are very different, and the focus of the U.S.-Mexico government on the lessening of climate change. And this focus is going to be very different—very difficult. The United States is committed to meet its climate goals, create millions of jobs inside the United States. And that has really changed their relationship. So we can talk more about these. Thank you for listening to this. And as I said, we’ll probably be talking a lot about energy and the inequalities that public health and vaccination rates, that will also cause tensions. And immigration is another point that we need to talk about in greater depth. Thank you. CASA: Thank you, Guadalupe, for that introduction. There certainly is a lot to talk about. Now let’s open this up to questions from our participants. (Gives queuing instructions.) Let’s see. We will start with a written question from Paul Haber, who’s a professor at University of Montana. He asks: Can you please provide some detail regarding the changes in labor required in Mexico by the USMCA? And what has happened to date? And do you expect a real deepening of the reforms between now and the end of the AMLO administration? CORREA-CABRERA: This is a very important question. With regard to the USMCA, mainly the main point that might cause tensions have to do—has to do with labor unions, particularly in the maquiladora sector, in manufacturing sector. The United States has been very clear with regards to that requirement, but that would, at the same time, lower the competitiveness of Mexico’s manufacturing sector. As I said, there have been, I mean, in the past couple of years an attempt to create independent labor unions in the maquiladora sector, but there are still extreme tensions. And there have not been a real advance in this—in this sense. But at the same time, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with his theme of primero los pobres, the poor first, and a support of Mexican labor, an increase—a very important increase since the beginning of his administration of wages, he is supposedly committed to help Mexican workers and to—and he has been focused as well on supporting not only the labor unions or the labor sector, but with his social programs that have been, I mean, advertised a great extent. Such as Jóvenes Construyendo el Futuro, the Youth Constructing Future, which is a very important, for him, but also very criticized program. And the support of mothers without—I mean, single mothers. And, I mean Youth Constructing Future for those who don’t have jobs. So on the one hand Andrés Manuel López Obrador, also in order to continue building his base of support or maintaining his base of support, focused—has focused on these programs, these social programs, that are not necessarily just focused on labor, as the way that the United States wants this to be seen in order to also rebuild the economy by changing the focus to internal development. I don’t see in that regard if what—if your interest comes from the United States, what has happened with the union is—with the labor unions and their capacity to really, I mean, grow in the Mexican manufacturing sector—I don’t see—I don’t see a lot of advancement in that area. And definitely in this regard, there are very different priorities in Mexico versus the United States. But Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been able to convince a number of his supporters, a number of Mexican workers, because he has increased in a very important way Mexican wages. And he is probably going to be able to achieve more increases when the elections—the presidential elections approach. But definitely we don’t see very definite changes with regards to this area as the USMCA has been posed. CASA: Next we have a raised hand from Sherice Nelson, assistant professor at Southern University in Baton Rouge. Sherice. Q: Good afternoon. Thank you so much for your talk. And I appreciate you leaving time for us to ask questions. As a professor, how do—the biggest challenge often is to get students to back away from some of the stereotypical information they get about U.S.-Mexico and the relationship, and the centering of that—of that relationship on immigration, when there’s far—as you mentioned—there are far other issues that define our relationship. Where are places that we can lead students to, to get better information that is not as stereotypical about the relationship, that will pique their interest? Thanks so much. CORREA-CABRERA: That’s a very important question. Thank you for asking. And absolutely, there is a way to present the issue on immigration, to place it in a political perspective—either from the right side or the left. The problem with immigration and the quality development and the access for jobs—I mean, it has been studied in depth by Mexican academics, United States academics. Issues have more to do with development and with the jobs that are offered in the United States, the pull and push factors of undocumented immigration, for example. And we have very different areas to be thinking about migration or immigration. And the focus recently has been at the border, has been with regards to asylum seekers, has been politicized in the United States, while many other areas have been, to some extent, ignored. There are—for educators, there are a number of analyses. One particular area that’s important to know, it’s United States—I mean, immigrants—how immigrants in the United States, coming from different countries, have been able to develop, have been able to make this country great. That’s one area that we have to focus on. And there is a lot of information in that regard. Another, I mean, issue that it’s important to know are the pull and push factors of undocumented immigration. And one important factor that usually we’re not focused on are the jobs that exist in the United States, and the perspective from—I mean, the undocumented immigration from the perspective of employers. And that is connected to this analysis of the role of immigrants in the United States. Where are they coming from? What are they doing? How they came here, and not just of those who want to come. Another issue that has been widely covered is the one that has to do with migration. Migration flows that start in countries such as Chile, that dangerous journey where that media has been focused on, without analyzing this as a whole, without analyzing this understand that there are jobs in the United States, there is a comprehensive immigration reform that’s on the table, and that that comprehensive immigration reform will definitely help to solve the problems of a system that needs the, I mean, immigrants to continue working, but it’s creating all sorts of problem. The disfunctions of U.S. immigration system have been identified. There is a proposal that’s bipartisan to solve these issues with temporary visas, pathway towards citizenship for those that are already here, that already have jobs, that already contribute to this economy. But unfortunately, immigration is definitely, as you correctly mention, a subject that has been utilized, that has been polarized, because it touches very important sentiments of the electorate. And we don’t understand it. Definitely the immigration system in the United States needs to change. And there are—there is a very important amount of articles, of studies that analyze not just those who want to come or the so-called migrant crisis at the border, but how the market in the United States works, the labor markets, what undocumented migrants do in the United States, how to solve these issues with these bipartisan efforts that have been put together in documents, such as the Comprehensive Immigration Reform, and also those that want to work. And many of these problems would probably be solved through the mechanisms that think tanks, and analysts, and academics have done. Important work by think tanks like the Migration—MPI, the Migration Policy Institute, or the—I mean, other initiatives in Mexico. There have been a lot of—there’s a lot of information about the possible policies to solve these issues. It’s important to consider that information is there, that the work is done, but the problem is the coverage. And definitely our students need to go to understand the suggested—the suggested solutions, creating legal pathways to migration, to temporary work in the United States, is probably the way to go. But unfortunately, we got into these politicized moments, and these electoral moments, and the discourse gets politicized. But there is a lot there, a lot of analysis, a lot of proposals that you can find. Amazing work, both in the United States, in Mexico, and in many other countries of the Americas, because right now the issue of undocumented immigration, irregular immigration does not only have to do with Mexico and the United States. Immigrants have to pass through Mexico in order to get to where they want to go in order to go where the works are located. But we know and we have seen that a number of people, for example, that what was called the Haitian crisis at the border, like, the journey was done from countries as far as Chile, and so many countries have to deal with that. For example, the situation in Venezuela—many migrants that have been—I mean, finding jobs and a home in Colombia temporarily are also going—also moving up and are going to the border. So there’s a lot there, and our students, you know, can find a lot of information. It’s just to get out of the media discourses that are presented and that do not allow us to see the reality. But there is a lot out there that we can access, particularly for our students. CASA: Our next question is a written question and comes from Pedro Izquierdo, a graduate student at George Mason University. He asks, what improvements and flaws do you see in the bicentennial framework regarding arms trafficking, unlike the Mérida Initiative? CORREA-CABRERA: Well, it’s—the Bicentennial Understanding is not—at this point it’s just a number of good wishes and the recognition of certain problems. Arms trafficking has been recognized in this Bicentennial Understanding. As of today, we don’t really know what the United States is going to be able to do with regards to arms trafficking, and there is a very important and complicated situation here because in the United States it’s not by decree, it’s not by—I mean, the arms possession and the way that United States citizens understand their rights with regards to bearing arms. It’s a constitutional right; therefore—and there’s a lot of—you know, there’s a very, very big business that will not end so easily. Therefore, the two countries might, you know, might agree on—I mean verifying or collaborating to end or to lessen the issue of arms smuggling. However, this is going to be very difficult unless something important happens in the United States with regards to the legislation to place some limits on the bearing of arms. This is very important. As of today, Pedro, there is not a concrete plan of how the two countries are going to collaborate in this regard. As we know, the minister of foreign affairs—I mean the Mexican government through the minister of foreign affairs, I mean, has a lawsuit against United States arms manufacturers with regards to the arms that come to Mexico and end up in the hands of drug traffickers. There is nothing else that it’s current today where we will know what the two countries are going to be doing. And this is the same with many of the good wishes, many of the areas of the collaboration, the end of the Mérida Initiative and the beginning of this understanding. We really don’t know what specific programs are going to be implemented and how these programs are going to be implemented, how much money is going to be directed to these programs at this time. We just have an understanding of how the priorities can get together to improve and to reframe, to some extent, the collaboration in terms of security and development. CASA: Next we are going to a raised hand; we have Terron Adlam, an undergraduate student at Delaware State University. Please go ahead, Terron. Q: Can you hear me now? CASA: Yes. Q: Hi. Yes. So I’m thinking about more the energy sector of this talk. So in Mexico I know there’s a lot of geothermal activity, so isn’t there a more effective way of, like—because global warming is increasing more and more as time goes on, like, the flooding, the overheating of the ozone, stuff like—couldn’t geothermal usage be more effective in Mexico and solar too, versus the oil refineries? CORREA-CABRERA: This is a very important question. The understanding of climate change in the United States is very different from Mexico. In the developed world, the concern about the environment has been focused—I mean, this has now been the center of the discussion and the center of the development programs and projects. In the developing nations, there are more immediate needs to be covered. With regards specifically to Mexico, there is not—climate change is not in the center of the discourse and the priorities of the Mexican government. Mexico has oil and gas and the current Mexican president—I mean, notwithstanding the analysis of other actors. What the Mexican government has had as a priority since the beginning of the administration has more to do with the development from the state, more centralization of the state, a greater role of the state in the sector of oil and gas. The climate change priority comes from the United States. Today, you know, the diplomatic efforts are going to be done to make Mexico to turn into the renewable sector, but at this point, it is not the priority of the Mexican government, neither the priority of a majority of the Mexican people, because in the developing world, climate change is important but it’s more important sometimes in certain parts of Mexico, such as Guerrero, Michoacán, and Tamaulipas, and it’s particularly the poorest regions of Mexico—Oaxaca or Chiapas—where there are several problems and, you know, immediate needs of people are not covered. And I’m talking about food. I’m talking about security very particularly. These pictures of children with arms in Guerrero and Michoacán tell us what the emergency situation is for a number of people, and the Mexican president has been able to create a discourse around these needs, around the needs for poor people, around the needs of those who can listen to that better, and he has a priority today—I mean, he sent a proposal to achieve an electric reform; well, the state is going to have more involvement and also a focus on electricity with the technologies that the Mexican state has been managed, which is not connected to solar or wind or the mindset that the United States has had in the past few years. So the priorities are very different and the studies are not directed there. The Department of Energy of the United States, through one of the laboratories of renewable energies, conducted a—I mean conducted a study and released the results of this report talking about the—according to the report—the negative effects in terms of emissions of carbon by Mexico and the increase in the cost of producing electricity. The Mexican government—the president alleged that that study was not based in reality. And you can see, then, what Mexico wants. And, you know, currently, Mexico has actively participated in the COP26 and it’s been involved in the conversation, but definitely we don’t know how much money or how this—(inaudible)—is going to be made. This is a very important question because I wasn’t able to go in depth with this. This is probably going to be the main point of tensions between the two countries in the future—definitely for Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Andrés Manuel López Obrador was a very big critic of the recent energy reform of 2013, 2014, the energy reform that allowed private capital to get into the oil sector. He was a pretty big critic. There have been a number of events that link corrupt Mexican governments with the concessions in the oil sector, oil and gas sector, so this is probably going to be—continue to be discussed. And if the president has the capacity of passing the reform—that I see it very difficult because of the numbers that he needs—the situation is going to become more tense, because his vision is nationalistic and it’s not—and nationalism—Mexican nationalism of today is not looking at climate change as its main priority. And you can see the supporters of Andrés Manuel López Obrador are really not discussing climate change. Mexican elites are discussing climate change and, of course, the opposition against Andrés Manuel López Obrador against the government of the Fourth Transformation, but they have an important majority—they don’t have a majority, sorry, the opposition. The important majority is within the government of the Fourth Transformation, and their support for electric reform is important. I don’t know how this is going to play out in the end, but in the United States and in Mexico, climate change is perceived in a very different way. That has to be understood very clearly because we don’t see the media, we don’t see how in the schools and how in Mexico overall the issue is well-ingrained into the society, because, of course, the society, the Mexican society, particularly the most vulnerable ones in the country, the very important number of poor people in the country has other priorities that have to do with food insecurity—have to do with food insecurity. CASA: Thank you. Our next question is a written question; it’s from Yuri Mantilla, professor of law at Liberty University, and he writes, can you please analyze the influence of political ideologies in Mexico and the U.S. that are shaping both international relations between the two countries and perceptions of the Mexican and American people regarding the current political contexts under the Biden administration in the U.S. and the López Obrador leadership in Mexico? CORREA-CABRERA: That’s an amazing question, but that is a very difficult question to answer very quickly. OK, let me try to do it. It’s a very big challenge. This is a very challenging question. As I mentioned with regards to climate change, the ideologies in Mexico and the United States, what is right and what is left in the two countries is quite—it’s, to some extent, different in the United States, the left and right. And today, because we have a president that ran on a left-wing platform and he was recognized as a left-wing president and also a very big critic of so-called neoliberal reforms and the neoliberal system that were represented by the previous administrations and that by the administrations that achieved democratization in Mexico. I’m talking about the National Action Party and all the parties that supported those reforms, the democratization in the country. And because of that, today, the ideology has transformed, to some extent; it’s not about—I mean, support for the Washington consensus as it was in the previous decades versus—which was represented in the government—versus another project that direct—the relationship more with the people. Now that mindset, that discourse, sometimes propagandistic in certain ways, is in the government. So the government presents itself as a left-wing government. Nationalism and a conception of first the poor—the poor first, very big criticism, in discourse only, about neoliberalism, without, you know, a real perspective what neoliberalism is because of the support that the current Mexican government has provided to USMCA, which is one of the foundation parts of what is perceived as neoliberalism, which is mainly liberalism in—not in the perspective of the United States overall—free markets, the importance of free markets in the economy. It’s a very challenging question because in the United States and Mexico there are important concepts that mean different things for people. Liberalism or neoliberalism for Mexicans mean support of markets and a support of the right, while in the United States, when we talk about liberalism, we think about progressive thinking; we think about equality but in a different way. In Mexico the center is equality in the economic regard, and the president today, the government, you know, is governing with the flag of equality, is governing with the flag of the left. And the so-called left is with the Mexican—or allegedly voted for the current Mexican president, but now some of them are debating themselves in different areas. So it’s not as easy to place the right and the left as it is more in the United States; even in the United States there are many issues with regards to position yourself in right and left. We have the progressive part of the electorate in the United States versus a more moderate left, and, as you all know, the Republican Party or the conservative segment of the U.S. population that’s more connected with Republican candidates, it’s kind of like a very different conception in Mexico. The right wing in Mexico in many ways support, for example, the Democratic Party in the United States. What is conceived as the opposition to Andrés Manuel López Obrador even are very critical of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s relationship with feminism or the feminist movement. Andrés Manuel López Obrador is not supporting the feminist movement because Andrés Manuel López Obrador alleges the feminist movement has been supported by other countries and the opposition. So for the alleged left that is represented by the government, feminism is not a part of their agenda, while in the United States the LGBTQIA movement, the feminist movement, support for climate change, those important values are part of the progressive movement of the left. I mean, in Mexico, and I explain this is why this is very, very important and a very challenging question to answer—I mean, just very quickly—is that, for example, climate change is not in the agenda and climate change is in the—it has been taken by the opposition to the Mexican government. Many representatives of the opposition are criticizing the current Mexican government but not focusing on not going and continuing with the desire of constructing the Dos Bocas refinery and going with oil and gas and focusing on electricity as in the previous times of the PRI. So a number of the Mexican elite that is in opposition—I mean that’s considered the opposition are supporting climate change. Why—not supporting climate change but are supporting, like, you know, the development of renewable energies and have as an objective climate change but mainly to criticize what the Mexican government is doing. So in that regard, we see a very big polarization between the ones that supported previous administrations versus this current government that connects with the left, while in the United States we see what is the ideological spectrum. A number of those who represent, as I said, the opposition are connected with the current administration objectives. For example, President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa presents very frequently his photographs with members of the Democratic Party, the current president, Joe Biden, and he’s very critical of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, so there’s a confusion that we can have based on our own ideologies that’s not very easy to understand in very quick explanation. But I hope that I was, to some extent, clear in this regard. CASA: Next we’re going to a raised hand. Ellen Chesler, who’s senior fellow at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. Ellen? Q: I actually had put my question in the chat, I thought, but I’ll ask it. Thank you so much for this interesting overview. I wanted to—I’m a historian by training and was going to ask you to historically frame some of your introductory remarks in a little bit more depth. First, of great interest to me, your comments about the importance of public health, specifically reproductive health policy. Have United States policies and support of Mexico in the last, you know, twenty-five years or so, in your view, been positive for the country, and what are the challenges that remain? And in a way linked to that, from your introductory comments, a question about labor: You mentioned, of course, that NAFTA, in your view, was successful, certainly from Mexico’s standpoint, but has remaining challenges, largely relating to labor organization and the raising of wages in Mexico to equalize the situation between the two countries. Can you comment on what prospects there are for that happening today in Mexico? CORREA-CABRERA: Very interesting questions. With regards to reproductive health, this also has to do with the ideology. The left in Mexico, which is now represented, in a way, by the current Mexican government, the current Mexican government has adamantly—since Andrés Manuel López Obrador was head of the government of Mexico City there have been, you know, an advancement with regards to reproductive rights, reproductive health, and that is not under question of the current administration, which is very interesting because in the United States the—I mean, there’s a different type of tension. And in other countries of the hemisphere too, we can see—you know, because we’re Catholic countries we can see that area as very complex and a lot of opposition with regards to that. In Mexico, there needs to be an opposition because of the mentality, because of the culture, but there has been an advancement in the courts, and recently there was a decision in one state of Mexico that decriminalized—and it’s very interesting how the Mexican government has been able to build a different discourse that has allowed the current government to advance in that direction. Decriminalization of abortion is a way that this has advanced. So I believe that possibly—I dare to say that possibly in the Americas, Mexico is one of the most progressive governments with regards to this subject, reproductive health and reproductive rights. It is very interesting—there must be a number of studies coming from this decision of the courts of one state of Mexico that’s going to be defining the future of reproductive rights in the country. With regards to the second question about NAFTA, labor rights, there is an understanding in the United States that NAFTA has been good, particularly for Mexico. In the technocracy sector, particularly those that, you know, contributed to renegotiate NAFTA—I mean, the Mexican elites recognize the gains of Mexico in the framework of NAFTA, particularly if we focus on the manufacturing sector. The jobs that we’re creating in maquiladoras, the jobs that were created due to NAFTA, were not enough to achieve or to allow Mexico to grow at rates that were acceptable. During the time of NAFTA, Mexico has grown at the same—almost at the same level of demographic rates of population rates. So overall, a number of jobs were lost in the beginning, the first years of NAFTA. Many of these people needed to move to the United States. So the effects of NAFTA in Mexico have been very extremely, extremely unequal. But what you will read probably in the reports that have been produced by Mexican academics, Mexican analysts and think tanks and in the think tanks of the United States is that NAFTA has been overall very good for Mexico. It has not been bad for Mexico. It has allowed the country to have access to a number of products but, at the same time, has affected some other sectors that could be considered of national security. And I’m thinking about the production of grain in the agricultural sector in particular. But with regards to labor rights—and this is why the question is very important, and I’m not sure that I answered it correctly. The United States has different priorities and has had different priorities that were manifested in the growth of dissatisfaction among an important segment of the U.S. population that has not been able to—I mean, become part of the development in the United States. That gave place to the Make America Great Again movement where the intention or the importance that a number of people in the United States, both in the left or in the right—the idea of a Green New Deal that it’s right now in the form of the Build Back Better framework has this idea in mind, to generate jobs inside the United States, because globalization or very aggressive globalization after the end of the Cold War really put a number of people in the United States in a complicated situation because the jobs were performed outside the borders of the United States. So today, this is why it is important to understand what USMCA is about with regards to labor. There is an important pressure from the United States, in particular, to Mexico to increase or—the conditions of the workers in the manufacturing sector overall because there is an important focus on wages. But if wages are—increase more than what the president already increased, you know, into this framework and labor unions make more complicated the entrance of foreign capital and the foreign capital goes back to the United States, will Mexico lose its competitiveness? And the losses will be for Mexico. So there is a tension there and definitely this tension has not been solved. The wages in Mexico have been low but that has to do with the labor supply and with the conditions of labor markets overall. And if there is a force to create the labor unions, this is probably not going to be in the—I mean it’s not going to benefit Mexican workers because the businesses are probably not going to generate those jobs and will probably relocate. That’s a conversation that has been going on and we have not solved. And we have not seen an improvement overall in the conditions or the wages of workers, more than the one that Andrés Manuel López Obrador by decree—has been given to the workers by increasing in double, particularly at the border wages in the manufacturing sector. But in the framework of USMCA, we haven’t yet seen the results and we have not yet seen also the pressure if Mexico has not because the unions have not been created and there are many tensions in that sector. There was an attempt to start with the first labor union in the maquiladora sector by—I mean today a person who is right now in Congress, Susana Prieto Terrazas—she ended up in jail in the state of Tamaulipas, so this is a very complicated subject that we haven’t been able to solve. CASA: I’m afraid we have to close now. We’re not able to get to all the questions, but we will give you the contacts for the professor and you can reach out to her directly, if you would like to continue the conversation. Guadalupe, thank you very much for being with us today, and to all of you for your great questions and comments. You can follow Guadalupe on Twitter @GCorreaCabrera. Our next Academic Webinar will take place on Wednesday, November 17, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Jason Bordoff, founding director of the Center of Global Energy Policy and professor of professional practice in international and public affairs at Columbia University, will lead a conversation on energy policy and efforts to combat climate change. In the meantime, I encourage you to follow @CFR_Academic on Twitter and visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for new research and analysis on global issues. Thank you again for joining us today. We look forward to tuning in on November 17. (END)

Paul Angelo, fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, discusses the migrant situation at the U.S.-Mexico border.   This webinar is part of the Religion and Foreign Policy Program's Social Justice and Foreign Policy series, which explores the relationship between religion and social justice.  Learn more about CFR's Religion and Foreign Policy Program. FASKIANOS: Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations Social Justice and Foreign Policy webinar series. I'm Irina Faskianos, vice president for the National Program and Outreach at CFR. As a reminder, today's webinar is on the record, and the audio, video, and transcript will be made available on our website CFR.org, and on our iTunes podcast channel, Religion and Foreign Policy. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.   We're delighted to have Paul Angelo with us today to talk about migration at the U.S.-Mexico border. We have shared his bio with you, but I'll give you a few highlights. Paul Angelo is a fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he focuses on U.S.-Latin American relations, transnational crime, military and police reform, and immigration among other topics. He was formerly an international affairs fellow at CFR and in this capacity, he served in the State Department as a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Honduras, where he managed the ambassador's security and justice portfolio. He provided technical assistance to the Honduran Police Reform Commission, supported strategy development agenda-setting for Afro-descendent, indigenous, and LGBTQ networks to improve civic engagement; and led policy and legal analysis on violence, crime and migration trends. He's a former active duty naval officer, and has completed several tours. And he has written commentary in many publications, including Foreign Affairs, our magazine, The New York Times, Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, and the Miami Herald to name just a few. So Paul, thanks very much for being with us today. Obviously, we're seeing a lot of movement on the U.S.-Mexico border. Some have argued that it is mushrooming now that the Biden administration has come to government, so if you could talk about what's happening and maybe address the root causes, as to why migrants are making their way to the U.S.   ANGELO: Great, thank you, Irina, and thanks to our support teams at CFR for setting this up. And for the invitation to join you all today. It's a pleasure to be on this call with you. And I think my real value add in this conversation is in the discussion of the root causes of migration, because of all the time that I've spent living and working in Central America, particularly in Honduras, but I also have experience in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua doing field work. But before I get into that discussion on the drivers of migration at the U.S. southern border, I'd like to clarify what's actually happening at the border today, because I think that there's a lot of misinformation in the news. Indeed, the news media has latched onto the term "crisis." But I think that betrays the reality of what we're observing. Yes, of course, there's a lot of desperation at the border. Yes, there are a lot of people, and we are likely going to see for the year 2021 a significant jump from pre-pandemic migration levels. But what we're seeing at the border state is not materially different from what we were seeing in the fall, or even just prior to COVID-19. The truth is that we've been managing a crisis on the southern border for decades now. And every single year from 1973 to 2009, there were more than 500,000 migrants apprehended, irregular migrants apprehended annually at the U.S. southern border. During the past decade, what we were actually seeing was historic lows in terms of the number of undocumented migrants seeking to gain access to the United States. There was only one year in the past decade, where the number of migrants apprehended at the U.S. border peaked over 500,000, and that was in 2019, when the Trump administration had purportedly sealed off the border and effectively closed off opportunities for asylum. In fact, 2019 was a banner year and I think a lot of what we're seeing for 2021 is going to be built up or pent up demographic pressure that accumulated over 2020 when the Trump administration was not actually enacting protocols to allow migrants and asylum seekers access to U.S. territory.   I'd also like to take advantage of this moment to remind everyone that surges at the border are cyclical and seasonal. They respond to weather patterns, labor demands, and enforcement regimes, not just in the United States, but also elsewhere in Latin America, especially in Mexico. And so I would say that due to the Trump era programs, such as the migrant protection protocols, known as the “Remain in Mexico” program, and the process of metering, in January of 2020, just as President Joe Biden was on the eve of the inauguration, was set to take office in the White House, there were already some 42,000 asylum candidates who were camped out on the Mexican side of the border, who had not yet been processed for U.S. immigration hearings, or excuse me, asylum hearings in the United States. And so what we're seeing right now is a build up in demand, in addition to regular migration patterns. And these points of clarification are not to deny that irregular migration is a major challenge for the United States in the southern border. But I want to make sure that we're having an honest conversation about what's happening today. And in fact, it's unclear to me why what's happening at the borders is a surprise to so many people because worsening conditions in Mexico and Central America are a well-trodden narrative. And although we saw an overall dip in migration during 2020, due to COVID-19 pandemic, and the closure of borders in response to the pandemic, the pressure to migration, excuse me, the pressure to migrate in Central America and Mexico only accelerated. And so the only sustainable solution to help Central Americans and Mexicans address the root, contain migrant flows, is to help address the root causes. And to this end, the Biden administration is requesting four billion dollars in foreign assistance from Congress. And it started to make positive personnel decisions to shepherd this initiative. Why is it so necessary and what will it address?   I'd like to zero in on four main issues. Firstly, the economy. Secondly, security. Thirdly, governance. And fourthly, climate change. On the economic front, I don't think we can talk about economic issues in Latin America in 2021, without having a discussion about COVID-19. In absolute terms, Latin America and the Caribbean has been the most affected region in the world by the pandemic. It is a region that comprises only 8 percent of the world's population, but 18 percent of the known COVID cases, and some 27 percent of the known COVID deaths. And that's not accounting for systematic underreporting by Mexico's, excuse me, by the region's second-most populous country, which is Mexico, it's estimated that there were over 300,000 excess deaths in 2020, which were likely attributable to COVID-19. We've also seen that the region was impacted due to the interruptions in supply chains, and the imposition of very strict lockdowns. And because of these factors, regional economic contraction in Latin America for 2020 was at around 7.7 percent. I would also note that Guatemala and Mexico, which are two of the countries of most concern to us today, were both above that regional average. In 2020, 34 million Latin Americans lost their jobs. We saw a dip in remittances from the United States. Given the economic recession here in the United States, that dip has now recovered. But nonetheless, it exposed the fragility of finance networks for many living in Central America and southern Mexico. I remind everyone that a majority of people in Guatemala and Honduras already live below the poverty line. And across the Northern Triangle, more than 70 percent of the workforce is employed in the informal economy, which means that these people do not have access to insurance or protections, and their access to medical attention is scarce.   The tragedy, the travesty, that the region has faced on the economic front has only been exacerbated by a long-standing pandemic, excuse me, a long-standing epidemic of insecurity. Although in 2020, we saw reductions in homicide across the Northern Triangle, the Northern Triangle countries still rank among the most dangerous countries in the world. And in 2019, Mexico had set a record for the highest number of homicides in the country's recent history. It almost equaled that number in 2020, despite the fact that it was imposing strict measures to contain the pandemic in some parts of the country, especially in parts of the country that had previously been reporting very high rates of violence. There are a lot of factors that we can go into in the question and answer period if you'd like to discuss why we've seen a dip in homicides, but I don't suspect that that dip is sustainable going forward. And I think that we will see insecurity, high rates of insecurity resume for 2021 and 2022.   The third factor that I'd like to point to is an overall failure in governance. In addition to state capture by criminal groups, Central America is rife with political corruption. And we've already seen the inflation of government contracts to distribute humanitarian relief and COVID-19 vaccines in places like Honduras. This will remind close watchers of Honduras, or close watchers of Central America in general, of the Astrapharma scandal back in 2015, in which the Honduran government provided preferential access or preferential contracts to a pharmaceutical company that was owned by the National party's congressional leader, who happened to be in the business of making placebos or inert medicines that were being administered in public hospitals that resulted in the deaths of dozens of people. Likewise, there was the Pandora scandal in Honduras that emerged in the following years in which the government was diverting public funds to shell NGOs as a way of paying off bribes to members of Congress, or members of the judiciary. And, likewise in neighboring Guatemala, everyone will remember the Alenia scandal which saw the ouster of former president Otto Pérez Molina in 2015. There was some progress that was being made on going after perpetrators of major political corruption in Central America with the internationally-backed CICIG, and the internationally-backed, OAS-backed MACCIH in Honduras, which were beginning to show results. But as these internationally supported investigative bodies, that were seeking to combat impunity and corruption in Honduras, and Guatemala, were making impressive results. And as their investigations get closer to the inner ring of presidents at the time of their mandates, were cut short. And so we've seen an overall reversal in terms of the anti-corruption crusade that was gaining steam and starting to bear impressive results in Central America, in the 2016-2017 period.   And then finally, when we talk about root causes, we can't have this conversation and particularly not at this moment without talking about climate issues. Everything that I've just mentioned, there's mounting demographic pressure for people to migrate. But I think the most proximate cause for migration in this current wave that we're seeing, are the two back-to-back category five hurricanes that hit Central America in the fall. They destroyed 90 percent of Honduras's bean and corn crops, which was a death sentence for many in a region where food insecurity was already pervasive. For those of you familiar with the region, you'll know that there's a stretch of territory called the Dry Corridor that starts in Costa Rica and extends all the way up to southern Mexico. And in that tract of territory, in 2019, there were already 1.4 million people in Central America who were food insecure. These hurricanes also didn't just destroy crops, they displaced people in communities, many of which had settled or built their livelihoods alongside river beds, killed some 140,000 livestock, and completely devastated plantain and banana farms, and other large large-scale agriculture. So further reducing employment opportunities for the agricultural workers in Central America.   I would also note that this is coming on the heels of a decade of disruption of traditional livelihoods due to climate change. The region was already seeing 40 percent less rain than historical annual averages, and rising temperatures and regular rainfall led to anything from coffee rust, to a bark-eating beetle that was disrupting timber crops, to the black sigatoka, which is a fungus that has been ravaging banana crops in Honduras in recent years. And so the travesty that we saw in the fall with the hurricanes, the two back-to-back hurricanes, has only compounded the issues, the pressures to migrate that many subsistence farmers were already facing. So that sort of addresses the root causes conversation, I don't want to deny that there are also pull factors here in the United States, most notably our own economic prosperity as a country. But I'm happy to go into those with the time we have remaining, but at this point, I'll cede the conversation back over to Irina, and look forward to having a good question and answer period with all of you.   FASKIANOS: Paul, that was fantastic. Thank you very much for dispelling the misinformation and addressing the root causes. So we want to go to all of you if you want to ask a question, please raise your hand by clicking on the icon. And you can also type your question in the Q&A box, but we'd love to hear from you live. So please do raise your hand. And there are just thank-you notes in the chat, saying this is very informative, and will will it be available after the fact? And yes, it will be available after the fact, we'll have a transcript and a link to the webinar, so you can capture all the facts that Paul has mentioned. And in this short time, it's really been enriching.   So, while we wait for questions, let me see hold on a minute. We do have questions. Three hands. Okay, so I'm going to go first to Todd Scribner. And please identify yourself, your affiliation. And please unmute yourself.   SCRIBNER: Hi, my name is Todd Scribner. I'm here from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Migration and Refugee services, their policy office. I'm curious, we're really big on the issue of root causes and addressing root causes is really the long-term solution to any of these problems. I'm wondering if you can point to any models from the past in which countries have worked with other countries to address root causes of this sort, that might be driving migration, that can be seen as a successful example of working with another country to kind of fix problems that are that are underlying drivers in the first place. Do you know of any?   ANGELO: Yeah, thank you, Todd. And in terms of this hemisphere, it's very hard for me to point to any positive, enduring examples of that. But I would sort of divert everyone's attention back to what the Obama administration was attempting to do in its final years. You will all likely recall that in 2014, there was an uptick in child migration, or unaccompanied child migration to the United States. In the span of nine months, we saw over 60,000 unaccompanied minors, most of whom were from Central America presenting themselves and seeking asylum at the U.S. southern border. And the Obama administration recognized that the only way that we were going to be able to turn the tide on that wave of migration was to help address the root causes the things that were propelling these young people from Central America and southern Mexico to the border. And the narrative that took hold here in Washington was one that was focused on violence and insecurity. Of course, these had long been some of the most violent countries in the world. In 2014 and 2015, I believe, San Salvador and San Pedro Sula were the murder capitals of the world. Honduras and El Salvador for a couple of years were competing back and forth for having the highest national homicide rates. And so the idea was that many of these young people were vulnerable to gang recruitment. And the U.S. government sought to help reform security sectors and judicial sectors to combat impunity, which over the span of the operation of the CICIG, we saw the homicide rate in Guatemala, for instance, dropped by more than half. But also, just as important, there was a real focus on providing community policing, and improving relations between the state and the most vulnerable communities in the countries of the Northern Triangle. This is something that I worked on in 2015-2016 in Honduras, it was an initiative known as the “place-based” strategy. And what it really focused on was firstly instituting community police units. And these were police that were specifically trained not to have a repressive presence of the state, but police units that were there to help with things like getting the cat out of the tree, or providing directions to somebody passing through a community. Also, these units of a community, police engaged in things like medical brigades, or providing educational materials to schools in their areas of operation. And with this model, and with a significant investment from both the Honduran government and the U.S. government in building things like infrastructure in the most vulnerable communities, in the span of two and a half years, we saw significant reductions in homicides. And in the two communities where I worked [inaudible] we saw homicide reductions by over 60 percent in both of those communities in just over two years. That was a model that was working. Unfortunately, the Trump administration came into office and in 2019, throws all U.S. assistance to the countries of the Northern Triangle on the pretext that the governments of these countries weren't doing enough to help stem migration. And I have to believe that that decision to freeze aid, and then the decision not to turn all that aid back on for the remainder of the Trump administration, really disrupted the momentum needed for the place-based strategy to take hold. The idea is that in a place-based strategy, these communities where we saw significant success, they were meant to be a geographic nucleus. And so the idea was that the community policing model would extend to neighboring communities until it had encompassed the most vulnerable areas of places like Guatemala City, San Salvador, [inaudible] San Pedro Sula, and that just hasn't happened. And so I think that going back to that model, and reinvigorating the place-based strategy is one example of how the Biden administration can once again start chipping away at the drivers that have been propelling people, and particularly young people, to the U.S.-Mexico border.   FASKIANOS: Thank you. Let's go next to Tereska Lynam.   LYNAM: Hi, thank you for taking my call. Can you hear me okay?   FASKIANOS: We can.   LYNAM: Oh, and thank you. So, wonderful presentation, thank you so very much. I'm from Oxford University and my experience, but I live in the U.S., my experience is that, at least in my circle of people, we're really interested in the human rights abuses that have occurred, particularly through the Trump administration with the separated families. That's what the media focuses on, obviously. Because you're talking about policy and policy, unfortunately, is boring to most people. So they don't really look at the underlying causes. They look at what's being blared at them that day. So I would love it if you could talk about how these human rights abuses are being managed right now, how people are being processed, and the border issues that we're continuing to hear. And then what kind of media advice, if you could, give to Vice President Harris, who's been charged with taking this over, in terms of doing the razzle dazzle that will make people happy, give them the sound bites they want, while also addressing these very complicated policy issues? Thank you.   ANGELO: Great. I think the answer to your second question second question helps inform the response I have to the first question. So I'll tackle that first. I think the most important thing that Vice President Harris and Ricardo Zúñiga, who's the new presidential envoy for the Northern Triangle of Central America, can do is try to relocate the drama that is unfolding at the border, and the attention that's unfolding at the border to other countries. And it's not to say that we should close off our asylum system. But what we need to do is introduce or reintroduced programs that gave people the opportunity to seek asylum or to claim refugee status abroad. There was a pilot program that was started in the Obama administration that would allow migrants, or refugees, excuse me, from the Northern Triangle countries to seek asylum via the United States in a place like Costa Rica, which is considerably safer, has higher sort of indicators for all measures of socioeconomic development. Likewise, there was an initiative that the Obama administration instituted and has now been turned back on by the Biden administration, called the Central American Minors Program, which allows for in-country refugee processing. And so to the extent that we can exert a degree of control over by preventing people from taking a dangerous journey northward, one in which every step of the way, their human rights are likely being violated. Keeping them in the region and giving them opportunities to seek relief in the region, is probably the best bet for giving our Vice President the sound bites that she would need to satisfy a rather demanding and perhaps even unrealistic public here in the United States.   But in terms of what's happening at the border, vis-a-vis human rights abuses, and/or the denial of asylum that was happening quite systematically during the Trump administration, the Biden administration has sought to bring back online our asylum system, reinstate processes to manage cross border flow responsibly, and to surge assistance to address the root causes. Those are the three main pillars. We've seen already thousands of individuals who are being held under the migrant protection protocols, indefinitely, brought across the border and assigned dates for their initial asylum hearings. And I'll just remind everyone that during the Trump administration, there were over 42,000 cases of individuals who were being held in Mexico under MPP, that faced consideration by U.S. immigration courts, but only 638 of those people were granted relief. And so it was a very, very high bar for asylum seekers to actually be granted asylum under the Migrant Protection Protocol Program. It's too early to tell what kind of results or what kind of yield the Biden administration will produce given that it's so early, but nonetheless, that the MPP participants are going to be the initial priority for the Biden administration when it comes to delivering on the issue of asylum. Likewise, unaccompanied minors are no longer being turned away, and instead, are being brought and transferred to Office of Refugee Resettlement facilities until they can be relocated to sponsors who are already in this country. The Biden administration, like I mentioned, had already turned back on the Central American Minors Program, so that refugee children can request protection in their countries of origin and then be safely flown to the United States if they qualify rather than having to pay into the pockets of human traffickers and human smugglers across the Central American isthmus and into Mexico. We've seen that other agencies in the U.S. government have now sought to bring on temporary shelters, like FEMA is building temporary shelters to deal with this ballooning of migrants that we're seeing at the border. And most of the incapacity that we have at the moment has to do with the fact that we're also confronting a pandemic and have to implement appropriate public health measures. And so in order to make sure that people are sufficiently distanced, and that we're engaged in the best, most up-to-date and best public health measures to deal with this pandemic, that's really driving the need for the construction of additional shelters. But broadly speaking, I think that the situation is certainly better. We're seeing refugee families as well, or asylum seeking families, being brought into the United States, not all of them are being turned away, as they were under the Trump administration under the pretext of Title 42, which allows the U.S. government to turn back people who are seeking to gain access to the U.S. national territory on the pretext of public health measures. So I think we're slowly and methodically seeing the Biden administration turn back on many of the processes that were stunted during the Trump administration, and particularly with the advent of the pandemic.   FASKIANOS: Thank you. Just to build on that question, from Michael Thomas of Dartmouth College. Do you think that the appointment of Vice President Harris to oversee this is a good move, essentially? And I'm assuming the answer to this is yes, but is there a number that you're hearing about the number of Central American refugees who can be resettled this year?   ANGELO: So great question. One of the things that the Biden administration has in terms of outstanding work, is that it has yet to raise the refugee cap or the asylum cap that was introduced under the Trump administration. Some of you will remember that during the Obama administration, there was a cap on 110,000 refugees who are granted relief here in the United States annually. And that was reduced from the Trump administration to a mere 15,000. And so I fully expect in the weeks to come that the Biden administration will resume or reinstate the cap that was operating under the Obama administration, and may even expand it a bit to offer more generous relief, given the upswell in demand that had been building because of the restrictions that were imposed by the Trump administration. But in terms of the appointment of Vice President Harris to deal with this issue, I think really, I think symbolically, it's a very clever move. Vice President Harris herself is the daughter of two immigrants, one of whom is from the Caribbean region. And so I think that the empathy that she would bring to that role is symbolically important for the administration. I think it makes sense from a political standpoint, it just shows that this administration is taking very seriously the issues from the border, and not just build a wall and seal off the border to prevent migration, but rather, really wanting to engage with the countries of the region and providing and implementing sustainable solutions. And so I think that it's a win across the board. And like I said, I think the team that the Biden administration has brought online to deal with border and Central American issues, Ricardo Zúñiga and Roberta Jacobson, Ambassador Jacobson, who was our ambassador to Mexico under the Obama administration into the early first year of the Trump administration, he couldn't find a better group of people to shepherd this reengagement with Central America and Mexico on the issue of migration.   FASKIANOS: Great. Let's go next to Alan Bentz-Letts, who has his hand raised? And please unmute yourself.   BENTZ-LETTS: Oh, hi. Thank you for your talk so far and for the chance to ask a question. I'm a retired chaplain, and a member of environmental and peace and justice groups at the Riverside Church in Manhattan. In 2009, both President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton supported what was really a coup against the existing president who was working to help the poorest people in Honduras. And since then, there's been just president who has been corrupt and decimated human rights in that country. And so there's a lot of evidence for saying that it's the existence of corrupt and very right-wing governments in Central America that link to gangs and that are causing the really terrible situation for poor people and for the common people in those countries. How would you respond to the claim that unless the United States changes its foreign policy, that this situation of migrants coming to the U.S. is going to continue and continue to be a serious problem?   ANGELO: Yeah, I appreciate that question. And I think that the, particularly the Trump administration's decision to really cozy up to President Juan Orlando Hernandez in Honduras was problematic for so many reasons. In fact, in 2017, you'll likely remember that there was an election that took place in which the opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla was set to win the election, was leading in the polls. And then in an act of God, the counting machines lost their electrical feed, and when they were turned back on some twelve hours later, President Juan Orlando Hernandez, the incumbent, was winning. And then he actually ended up winning the election, at least in the formal count that was made, despite the fact that there were significant international protests to that election, to include from the Organization of American States, which was suggesting that Honduras redo the election, and invite international observation mission to oversee it. The Trump administration just outright recognized the incumbent government, which was a huge setback for democracy, was a huge setback for the opposition, and really took the wind out of the sails of people who felt that that finally Honduras was turning the curve. And that finally there was going to be some accountability for the corruption that had been, for many years, perpetrated by the National Party, which has been in power for most of the past decade. And so I do think that single foreign policy decision, the recognition of Juan Orlando's victory in 2017, was a major setback. And now that we're seeing in any number of drug trafficking cases that are being processed in U.S. courts to include a case of President Hernandez's own brother, who was found guilty of cocaine trafficking and money laundering in a New York District Court. We're seeing just how deep the tentacles of these organized crime groups run inside the Honduran government. And just this past week, an associate of Los Cachiros implicated Juan Orlando Hernandez again, in drug crimes, but also implicated former President Manuel Zelaya in the same kinds of drug corruption. And so what it really points to is, in a very nonpartisan way, pervasive corruption across the political class in Honduras. And the only way to tackle that, is really for the international community, led by the United States, to go after politicians and public officials who are engaged in public corruption. And to do so is something that has been at least floated by the Biden administration as a possibility through the establishment of a regional anti-corruption body that would be supported by perhaps the UN, or the Organization of American States, to really help nascent and sometimes inexperienced investigative and judicial officials in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, conduct the kinds of investigations that are needed in order to bring public officials to justice.   FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to go next to Mark Hetfield, who runs HIAS, and has done so much work in helping refugees. So Mark, if you can unmute yourself.   HETFIELD: Thanks, Irina. And thanks, Paul. I wanted to follow up on what Paul had said about the refugee ceiling and the presidential determination in the context of the Central American issues. You said that you believe that President Biden will raise the ceiling and I think all of us think he will, but the question I have for you, if you have any ideas, or insights, or theories, as to why hasn't he done it yet? Because on February 12, he sent Secretary Mayorkas and Secretary Blinken to Congress to present their fifteen page document explaining the urgent need for an emergency presidential determination on refugee resettlement. Again, February 12. And we're still waiting for it. The Biden administration has just continued to carry out the Trump administration's refugee resettlement policies 100 percent. Refugees were literally booked on flights and then had to be unbooked by the State Department, 715 of them, because of Biden's failure to sign the presence of determination that he promised on February 12. So, what's the holdup? And what's the tie in, if any, to the to the issues at the border?   ANGELO: Yeah, I would just offer that I think likely part of it has to do with optics. I mean, now that the media has latched on to this so-called crisis at the border, any sort of major move that would signal a major increase in people who are being resettled in the United States, might not be politically palatable at the moment. But I would also say that we don't really fully have our immigration, and asylum, and refugee systems fully running and back online yet, this is a process. A lot of what the Trump administration did was tweak within bureaucracies. And so even though there are executive orders that signal in the direction of a more humane migration policy, more humane asylum policy, a lot of the procedures that have been enacted are bureaucratic procedures that have to be undone by the individual agencies or by the departments that are implementing them. And so I think there's probably an instinct to wait on raising the refugee cap until we have more sustainable, and workable, and regularized mechanisms in place that are happening at the level of the bureaucracy.   FASKIANOS: Paul, I'm going to take a written question from Mary Yelenick, who is with Pax Christi International. She writes: “Can we fairly address the crisis in Latin America without a discussion of the U.S. historic military and economic interventions in the region?”   ANGELO: Right, I mean, the United States, it's no secret that it had been specially trained, the Cold War played a less than positive role in the countries of the Northern Triangle, and the militarization of the region during that period is largely why we're seeing such high levels of violence across society today. A lot of the excess arms that were left over in the wake of civil conflict in Central America have been made available to the [inaudible] the street gangs, and drug trafficking organizations that in many spaces of Central America, rule the day and can exert significant armed influence over communities. And so I think that more than anything, is the reason why the United States needs to have a prominent seat at the table. The United States has a responsibility, I think, more responsibility to help alleviate a lot of the strife that was left in the wake of the conflicts that defined Central America in the 1970s and 1980s. Likewise, I would just say on the issue of firearms and the United States, I think in terms of building the kinds of confidence with the Mexican government right now, on the issue of migration, and in seeking a more positive working relationship with the administration of President Lopez Obrador in Mexico, the United States has to get a handle on its own obsession with firearms.   A couple of years ago, I was speaking to a police officer in [inaudible], who gave me a figure that on average, there are 2,000 firearms that are either legally or illegally purchased in the United States that cross over the border to Mexico illegally on any given day. And that was in probably I think, that was a conversation I had in 2018. I'm not sure what the most updated figures are right now. But nonetheless, the scourge of violence that we're seeing beset Mexico right now, which, Mexico had historically had high elevated levels of violence, but in terms of high homicide rates, it wasn't typically among the top ten to twenty countries in the world, the homicide rate. Now we're seeing Mexico is exceeding Guatemala and El Salvador in terms of its own homicide rate, and for a heavily populated country, like Mexico, that's tens of thousands of people in any given year. And inevitably, when you trace the origins of the firearms that are being used in these homicides, a vast majority of them were purchased in the United States and illegally exported to Mexico. And so in terms, it's something that the Mexican government has long laid as an agenda item for bilateral relations with the United States. But until the United States is enforcing better its own border, and attempting to more systematically prevent the export of firearms from the United States to Mexico, I really don't think that we're going to see any sustainable gains in bringing violence down in Central America and Mexico.   FASKIANOS: And, of course, we have our own debate now on gun policy in the wake of the tragic shootings in Colorado, and last week in Atlanta. So we have a lot of work to do here. Let's go next to Steven Gutow. And unmute yourself, Steve. Okay.   GUTOW: I did it.   FASKIANOS: You did it.   GUTOW: You know, it's not easy for me, Irina, but I did do that. So.   FASKIANOS: You did do it! Good.   GUTOW: It's good to see you, Irina. And, Paul, thank you, thank you, for your service to our country, and also for your presentation to all of us. I live in the world of both policy and politics, and I never let politics get too far away from me, because I know that's a sure way to not be successful in winning anything. We live in a country that's very divided in terms of, I'm already seeing that the numbers going up and the concerns going up that Biden didn't do X and didn't do Y. And I'm more interested in what he hasn't done and what he has done. I'm more interested in hearing things he could do better than have and have been sort of shaded over by how great he is and how bad Trump is, because we all, I don't know if we all, I think that. But with that said, what is wrong? I mean, somebody woke up at 6:00 a.m. yesterday and said, "We can bring all the immigrants we want can't we?" I said, "Yeah, but we can't we can't win the 2022 elections if we do." My questions is, what is Biden doing wrong? And what did he do wrong, did he make some suggestions that everybody, we should basically should start coming over before he decided to say that they should wait? It's one of the things that the Democrats can do better and do better with not in terms of doing the more just things. I'm a rabbi, according to God, but doing the more just things according to the politics of America.   ANGELO: Well, you know, I actually think that the administration has taken some very early and positive steps in signaling to migrants in Central America and Mexico not to come. In fact, you know, within a week of being named as the president's advisor on migration issues, Roberta Jacobson, Ambassador Jacobson, was on the airwaves, using the podium of the press secretary at the White House saying in Spanish, "Do not come. Do not come now. Now is not the time. We don't have any, our processes fully in place yet." And she did so in Spanish. And it was something that was replicated and aired on radio and TV throughout Central America. That's the kind of signaling that I think is so incredibly important, mostly because we're living in an environment right now in which misinformation creates reality. And so people in Central America, in the absence of that kind of signaling, in the absence of that kind of messaging, are going to latch onto whatever the human smugglers or traffickers are pushing out to them on social media or on radio spots, or even on WhatsApp chats. And so to the extent that the United States can help control that narrative, I think we're all the better for it. Likewise, as I mentioned, the restarting the Central America Minors Program is just, it's firstly, symbolically important, but secondly, it's practically important. The less that we can, or the more that we can prevent young people from Central America and their parents from putting them in harm's way by paying human traffickers to smuggle them across borders, and into the United States, or at least to the U.S.-Mexico border, the better off we can be, and the better off we can protect their rights. And so I think from that program, as well, we can contemplate other in-country refugee processing, that can help us in a more sustainable and more humane way manage the desire and flow to access the United States.   FASKIANOS: Paul, to pick up on that point, from David Greenhaw, formerly of the Eden Theological Seminary, can you talk about the internal struggle on process in a family when they're so desperate as to send their children across the border unaccompanied? Because we know so many children are coming accompanied?   ANGELO: Well, I think this is actually part of the incentive structure that we have given our policy in the United States. That because the Biden administration is now allowing minors, unaccompanied minors, to come across the border, and it's processing them and within a couple of weeks will likely, for many of them, find sponsors, family members who already live in United States with whom they can stay. I think that's actually encouraging people to send their children across the border and accompanied. Even if these entire family units are on the Mexican side of the border together. Many of them, and I don't have any firm statistics on this, but many of them may be presenting their children as unaccompanied minors, or their children may be presenting themselves as unaccompanied minors, knowing that it's a decision between, well, if my whole family can't make it together, at least, my son or daughter can have a better future. And they have a grandmother, or an aunt, or an uncle, or a cousin who's already in the United States. And so it's the sort of discretionary policy, which doesn't treat all migrants as equals, and not saying we should from a humanitarian standpoint, that is perhaps fueling the surge in unaccompanied minors that we're seeing at the border right now. Which is why the activation of the Central American Minors program is so incredibly important in preventing future waves of irregular migration of young children to the U.S.-Mexico border.   FASKIANOS: Great, I'm going to go next to Alejandro, I'm sorry, I'm just pulling up the list. Yes. Alejandro Beutel, who has his hand raised.   BEUTEL: Hi, can you hear me?   FASKIANOS: Yes, we can.   BEUTEL: Okay. Dr. Angelo, thank you very much for an illuming presentation. And Ms. Faskianos, thank you for facilitating this conversation today. This is an issue that is near and dear to me for both professional and personal reasons. The latter being myself as someone of Central American descent with family in Honduras and El Salvador, professionally, though, as well, even taking a more domestic lens on this. At New Lines, several colleagues and I are looking at the issue of far-right extremism here in the United States and in Europe. And one of the components to that is looking at nativism in a transatlantic setting. And obviously, that includes here in the United States. One of the things that we are doing as part of that is sort of a threat assessment of the impact that nativism can have on particular communities, including ones that have been historically disenfranchised, or marginalized, or targeted. And so in the context of the present discussion today, one of the things that is sort of on our radar, and I would love to sort of get your thoughts on this, is at the moment, it appears as though far-right extremist actors within the United States have their attentions diverted elsewhere. Certain rhetorical targets, like Antifa, Black Lives Matter, even the general opposition to the Biden administration, perhaps. But that said, is that in prior years, they have also, had a very strong emphasis on nativism, which operationally, we could define as Muslims and immigrants in general. And so my question then, in the context of this, given the fact that there is this sort of crisis narrative, if you will, that's butting up against an empirical reality that you've described at the beginning of your excellent presentation. My question would be, then, in terms of trying to diminish the prospect of sort of the social aperture, the permission structures for nativist violence and harassment, what could be done in terms of policy and political tone to diminish that, in your opinion?   ANGELO: Yeah, I mean it's, I think the initial signaling from the Biden administration is an important one. The Biden campaign and the administration have long said that we are a nation of immigrants, but we're also a nation of laws. And so in order to make sure that we are living up to our, or fulfilling our promises as a nation, we need to continue to be a welcoming place for migrants. And at the same time, we also need to have the right procedures and processes in place in order to handle both the demands here in the United States for labor, particularly agricultural labor, which is a contributor of migration from Central America and Mexico. But likewise, the demand for opportunity, and even refuge here in the United States. And so, I think that's rhetorically, I think, signaling in that direction as a way to push back against the sort of nativist instincts. But I would also just cite that the Biden administration has presented to Congress a comprehensive immigration bill, which would provide a pathway to citizenship for the approximately 11 million undocumented migrants or immigrants who are already in the United States. And depending on the poll you look at, a majority of Americans support this measure. I've seen recent polling anywhere between 57 and 69 percent. But there doesn't really appear to be the kind of support for, in either chamber of Congress, for that kind of comprehensive immigration reform. And so I think that in terms of showing progress on immigration, and showing progress on a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in this country, I think getting bipartisanship, piecemeal legislation focused on issues relating to migration, will help address some of that nativist instinct. If you can show that Republicans and Democrats in Congress can both agree on things like providing relief for DREAMers or for agricultural workers, which are currently under consideration in Congress at the moment, I think that's the most sustainable or feasible way of getting essential relief as quickly as possible to people who need it, and for an immigration system that needs it, and to do so in such a way that doesn't inflame the sort of the nativist segments of the U.S. electorate.   FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going go next to Gonzalo Alers's question in the chat. He's at Drew University. And can you talk a little bit about the conditions of the detention centers, the relationship between the agents of governments represented, treatment of these peoples, and the presence of world observers, in terms of human rights organizations, and then just expand on that? And bringing in Hannah Stewart-Gambino's question, and religious actors on the border? Is the religion community helping affect change, or is that decreasing? Or what do you see?   ANGELO: Right, so I think religious and civil society organizations are so incredibly important. Firstly, in monitoring and making sure that the United States actually is fulfilling its promise as a nation, and is living up to its values as a nation, in the administration of our migration and refugee systems. But that being said, at the moment, because of the restrictions on movement or on access, given the public health concerns in the midst of a pandemic, I think that there's certainly some understandable hesitancy to provide access to civil society organizations that have long been guarantors of transparency in the system. But nonetheless, I mean, I myself have not been to any of the detention facilities, and certainly not the makeshift ones that have come up in recent months, that have been brought online to deal with the surge. But nonetheless, my sense is that the administration is trying to do right by the individuals who are being detained and being held.   And likewise in terms of the unaccompanied minors, there's a real commitment to trying to get unaccompanied minors who have come into United States, outside of these detention facilities, and inside the homes of sponsors who already live here in the United States. And so I would just say more broadly speaking, I think that civil society also has an incredibly important role to play in the administration of assistance, U.S. foreign assistance in Central America, as a way of addressing the root causes of migration. The Biden administration has already said that we are not going to engage with or provide assistance to institutions or individuals in Central America, who don't have our best interests or the best interests of democracy at heart. And that means that the aid is going to be largely conditioned on anti-corruption progress. And that aid that is not made available to governments, which will likely not be the majority of the aid, we made available to civil society, and especially religious organizations who are doing some of the most impressive humanitarian work coming around in Central America. And so I think that those kinds of partnerships and the ability of the United States government organizations, and departments like the Department of State, USAID, Department of Homeland Security, to outsource a lot of the good work that it's doing, that it intends to do in addressing the root causes of migration, to local civil society organizations and religious organizations is an incredibly important piece and should not be discounted in this broader discussion of how we're going to address the root causes.   FASKIANOS: Fantastic. And I just want to raise Sister Donna Markham, who is with the Catholic Relief Services, put something in the chat she has noise in the background, so she can't say it herself. But just to bring to this discussion. For meeting with our agencies serving along the border, many of those seeking asylum are targets of the drug cartels, this fear of death or torture of their children is a major reason parents are sending the kids by themselves. And then she said, are there any successful strategies from the Obama administration for curbing the public of the cartels?   ANGELO: I mean, I think this just goes to a broader conversation that is being had right now. In fact, earlier this week, Ambassador Jacobson, Ricardo Zúñiga, and Juan Gonzalez, who's the senior advisor, senior director for Western Hemisphere Affairs on the National Security Council, all met with the Mexican government on cooperating for a more sustainable and humane migration system, and greater cooperation, collaboration between the United States government and the Mexican government. And so, Mexico itself is dealing with a plethora of issues at the moment. As I said, it's one of the worst, in statistical terms, one of the worst affected countries in the world, when it comes to the pandemic. It hasn't secured the sufficient number of vaccines for its population, the vaccines it already has on the ground are not being distributed well enough. The U.S. government, in a good faith gesture, just made available 2.5 million vaccines to the government as well. But really, when it comes to migration and making, cutting down on the vulnerability of migrant populations to organized crime, and organized crime groups and gangs, particularly in Mexico, because of the migrant protection protocols, I would say that cooperation with Mexico is key. And in order to engender the kind of confidence that will reactivate U.S.-Mexico security cooperation, more broadly speaking, because much of that security cooperation, which had become a staple of the U.S.-Mexico bilateral relationship under the Bush administration, under the Obama administration, had lapsed during the Trump years. I would say that the U.S. government, as I mentioned earlier, really needs to get a handle on its own firearms issues, and greater enforcement of our own border and making sure that what's going across the border from the United States to Mexico, is regulated, just as much as we regulate what's coming across from Mexico to the United States.   FASKIANOS: Great. And my apologies, Sister Markham is with Catholic Charities USA. So toggling between too many screens here. We are at the end of our time, and I apologize. I just wanted to see if you could close out, Paul, with a question from Tom Walsh, just about how we are engaging with the UN agencies such as the UN Office of Drugs and Crime, or International Organization on Migration? Or if this crisis is mostly a domestic and a regional multilateral issue?   ANGELO: That's a fantastic question. And I think that there's a bigger role for the United Nations in particular to play in helping set up in-country refugee processing in the countries of Central America. Not all of the people who are seeking refuge in another country from the Northern Triangle need to find their relief in the United States. Many of them want to because they have family ties to the region, to the country, or it seems as though it's the biggest economy that is the shortest geographic distance from them. But there are other countries in Latin America and elsewhere in the world, that could also provide the same kind of relief that the United States or Mexico can. And we can only engage in that conversation if the United Nations has a bigger seat at the table. And so I would just offer that the United States certainly does, or the United Nations certainly does have a role to play. And I would encourage the Biden administration to really seek opportunities with UNHCR and UNODC, as you mentioned, in trying to really tackle the issues, both in terms of the proximate causes for migration, but also in addressing more broader issues relating to the root causes.   FASKIANOS: Wonderful. Well, we couldn't get to all the questions but we covered a lot of ground. Thank you, Paul Angelo for this. It's great to have you at the Council. And to all of you for your terrific questions, and comments, and the work that you're doing in your communities. We appreciate it. You can follow Paul Angelo on Twitter @pol_ange. You can also find his op-eds, and testimonies, and other pieces on our website CFR.org. So I encourage you to go there. Please follow us on Twitter @CFR_Religion. And, as always, send comments, suggestions to us at [email protected]. We love hearing your suggestions of future topics we should be covering. So thank you all again for doing this, for being with us, and stay well, and stay safe.

The Council on Foreign Relations and the Whitney Museum of American Art invite you to join our panelists for a discussion of Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, currently on view at the Whitney. Vida Americana explores how Mexican artists like Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros used murals and artwork to depict the fight for economic and social reforms in the country and the influence their work had on U.S. artists at the time. Panelists discuss the social role of art, particularly how these artists introduced visual art as a way to address societal abuses and injustices, and how this transformation has influenced culture, politics, and the relationship between the United States and Mexico.