During the North American Leaders’ Summit on Tuesday, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador expressed his appreciation for President Joe Biden’s stance against the construction of a border wall between the United States and Mexico, The Epoch Times reports.
Lopez Obrador commended Biden for not building “even one meter of wall,” despite the recent increase in illegal immigration across the southern border.
In a joint press conference, the Mexican president stated, “You, President Biden, you are the first president of the United States in a very long time that has not built not even one meter of wall. And that—we thank you for that, sir, although some might not like it—although the conservatives don’t like it.”
He also thanked Biden for maintaining a “relationship of cooperation” with Mexico and for not subjecting Mexicans who “live and work in a very honest fashion” in the United States to harassment, adding, “They’re not suffering raids as it unfortunately used to happen in the past.”
Furthermore, Lopez Obrador called on Biden to push for Congress to “regularize the migration situations” of millions of Mexicans who have been living in the United States without documentation.
On Jan 21, 2021, one day after his inauguration, Biden issued an executive order halting construction of the border wall, stating that a wall spanning the entire southern border is “not a serious policy solution” and a “waste of money.”
Under the Trump Administration, 450 miles of the border wall had been authorized and built between 2017 and 2020.
The Department of Homeland Security announced in July 2020 that the remaining funds allocated for the construction of the wall would be used for “environmental remediation and mitigation,” as well as for installing cameras, lighting, and detection technology in areas where barriers were already built.
