The Biden administration has agreed to supply Mexico with excess doses of the coronavirus vaccine, and Mexico is moving to help the United States contain a migration surge along their shared border, according to senior officials from both countries involved in the conversations.
Stars and Stripes is making stories on the coronavirus pandemic available free of charge. See more staff and wire stories here. Sign up for our daily coronavirus newsletter here. Please support our journalism with a subscription. The Biden administration has agreed to supply Mexico with excess doses of the coronavirus vaccine, and Mexico is moving to help the United States contain a migration surge along their shared border, according to senior officials from both countries involved in the conversations. The decision to send AstraZeneca vaccine to Mexico, and to Canada, is expected to be announced Friday. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently asked President Joe Biden to help them fill vaccine shortfalls. Mexican and U.S. officials who described the agreement said it was not a quid pro quo conditioning the delivery of vaccines on an enforcement crackdown. Rather, the United States made clear that it sought help from Mexico in managing a record influx of Central American teenagers and children. Mexico pledged to take back more Central American families “expelled” under a U.S. emergency health order while urging Biden to share the U.S. vaccine supply, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the conversations. A White House official said “we are assessing how we can loan AZ doses to both Canada and Mexico” and “assessing the feasibility” with companies. “Our top priority remains vaccinating the U.S. population, but the reality is that this virus knows no borders and ensuring our neighbors can contain the virus is mission-critical to protecting the health and economic security of Americans and for stopping the spread of COVID-19 around the globe,” a White House official said. While cautioning that the plan was “not fully finalized yet” because details are being worked out with AstraZeneca, White House spokesperson Jen Psaki told reporters that of 7 million “releasable” doses of the vaccine in the government stockpile, the plan is to send 2.5 million to Mexico and 1.5 million to Canada. Repayment of the “loan,” she said, “could be future AstraZeneca doses, or other doses.” On Thursday morning, after The Washington Post’s report was published, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard confirmed that Mexico would receive vaccine from the United States. “They ask me if it is true that there is a vaccine agreement with the United States to follow up on the conversation between Presidents López Obrador and Biden,” he tweeted. “Yes, the information is correct. Tomorrow at 9 a.m. I will give you the details because we are still working on it. Good news!” In recent weeks, Mexico has staged and publicized a number of antimigration operations, largely along its southern border with Guatemala. Mexico’s national guard has raided the northbound trains that Central American teenagers ride to the U.S. border, stopped migrants with counterfeit United Nations documents, and detained migrants crammed into trailers. Those kinds of operations are not new in Mexico, but they have proliferated in recent weeks, according to current and former Mexican officials, as the number of Central American migrants passing through the country has grown. Mexican officials have said publicly that their immigration enforcement actions are conducted independently of the United States, with an aim to applying their own laws regulating the flow of migrants. A more visible Mexican immigration enforcement effort is expected to be announced soon, according to current and former Mexican officials. “It seems that what we’re going to see in the coming days is a reactivation of the Mexican immigration enforcement that Trump negotiated and pressured in 2019,” said Tonatiuh Guillén, the former leader of Mexico’s migration agency who resigned in 2019. “But it appears that the new agreement is with the Biden government, as a reaction to increased migratory flows.” The new enforcement effort will consist partially of a larger deployment of Mexico’s national guard and — unlike the train raids — will more closely target migrants traveling with smugglers, often in private vehicles. Roberto Velasco, a spokesman for Mexico’s Foreign Ministry, said the two countries “share the common objectives of addressing the root causes of migration in southern Mexico and northern Central America and that of fighting COVID-19.
