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Joe Biden now Begins Fence-Mending with Mexico

WHITE HOUSE - Rather than talk of bigger walls, the American president did some fence-mending on Monday with his counterpart south of the border.

U.S. President Joe Biden, in a virtual meeting with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, noted "a long and complicated history between our nations that haven't always been perfect neighbors with one another."

Biden, in the White House, told Lopez Obrador in Mexico City that "we're safer when we work together — whether it's addressing the challenges of our shared border or getting this pandemic under control."

Biden explained that when he was vice president in the administration of Barack Obama, it was decided to "look at Mexico as an equal, not as somebody who is south of our border. You are equal."

Biden Begins Fence-Mending with Mexico

Lopez Obrador, who appeared on video screens in the Roosevelt Room, said that "integration will strengthen both of our countries." He also thanked Biden for wanting to base the relationship on respect and equality, adding that "we must keep on cooperating for further development based on independence and autonomy."

The meeting, not held in person because of the coronavirus pandemic, is intended to "usher in a new phase" of the bilateral relationship, according to the White House, noting the move to a different track from one pursued by the previous U.S. president.

During his four years in office, Donald Trump, who was succeeded by Biden in January, threatened Mexico with tariffs and a crackdown on migration, and claimed the southern neighbor would pay for a wall along their 3,100-kilometer-long common border.

Mexico did not pay for the wall and Trump on Sunday, in his first speech since leaving office, blamed Biden's administration for leaving the border wall unfinished.

"They don't want to complete it," Trump said in an address to a conservative conference in Florida. "They don't want to complete little sections in certain little areas."

Trump also criticized his successor for dismantling other planks of his tough immigration and border policies and issued unsubstantiated warnings that Biden's polices would lead to a renewed wave of mass illegal migration.

Before Monday's meeting between Biden and the Mexican president, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced steps to allow migrant families separated at the border to reunite and remain in the United States – a reversal of Trump's approach, which some rights groups had compared to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

"We applaud Secretary Mayorkas' commitment to remedy the torture and abuse of families who were separated from their children in immigration proceedings," American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony Romero said in a statement. "Of course, the devil is in the details, and Secretary Mayorkas has to shed all the caveats and qualifications around his announcement and follow through with everything that's necessary to right the wrong."

Mayorkas, speaking to reporters at the White House earlier in the day, said the administration is "working around the clock to replace the cruelty of the past administration with an orderly, humane and safe immigration process. It is hard and it will take time."

Mayorkas said the Trump administration "dismantled our nation's immigration system in its entirety."

The Trump administration's last homeland security secretary, Chad Wolf, bristled at the criticism. He tweeted that Mayorkas' assertion that there is no crisis at the southern border "defies, logic, reality, and the facts. Ask communities along the border."

Mexico, which sent troops to its southern border with Guatemala under pressure from Trump, has been hosting about 70,000 people seeking asylum in the United States while they waited for dates in immigration courts.

The Biden administration immediately suspended the program, known as Remain in Mexico, when the new president took office and subsequently announced an estimated 26,000 people with still-active cases could be released in the United States while their cases played out. 