Mexico’s foreign affairs secretary: state law jeopardizes cooperation with Texas

This week, I crossed the border from Ciudad Juárez into El Paso. At the same time, $746 million in goods also crossed into Texas along our shared border. Mexico is now the United States’ top trading partner, to the tune of $1.5 million per minute, one-third of that exchange taking place with the Lone Star State.

I’m visiting Texas as Mexico’s minister of foreign affairs at a critical time in our bilateral relationship. The destinies of our two nations are joined together by a rich history, a vibrant present, and a promising future. On the one hand, we have much to gain from working together to make North America the most competitive region on the planet. On the other hand, I am concerned that hate, bigotry and xenophobia are clouding our potential to prosper together. I’m in the Lone Star State to share with you what Mexico, your friend and neighbor, is doing on both sides of the border to make sure we take the right path.

In December 2023, an unprecedented number of migrants and refugees, primarily from other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (not Mexico), were detained by Customs and Border Protection. This was the highest number of encounters ever recorded on our common border. Before the new year, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador invited U.S. Secretaries Antony Blinken and Alejandro Mayorkas to Mexico City to find solutions. Both countries believe that migration should be safe, orderly, legal and humane. This means that we need to address the root causes of unauthorized migration and simultaneously ensure access to legal pathways for those who can contribute their talent to North America’s prosperity and are already doing so.

In a governmentwide effort, we designed the Mexican Model for Human Mobility with five main pillars: well-being in places of origin and return, addressing external political factors, expanding legal pathways, managing undocumented migration humanely and, of course, assisting and empowering Mexican communities abroad. It is yielding results.

Today, encounters on our shared border are down by 45% from a historic high in December 2023. Mexico has invested more than $150 million in international development projects that address the structural causes of migration and assist returnees.

We are doing our part to ensure that people do not have to leave their countries in the first place. If we continue to work together, we can avoid costly border closures and modernize our integrated infrastructure for the benefit of both countries. A delay of only 10 minutes at the border while crossing goods costs $15 million.

Meanwhile, there are 37.3 million Mexicans who proudly call the United States home, with almost 10 million of them in Texas. Mexican migrants account for $324.8 billion in income, which is greater than the GDP of Colombia. Yes, some of that income goes to Mexico as remittances, but that amounts to only 18.5%. This means that 81.5% gets reinvested into local communities across the country. Mexicans make invaluable contributions to key sectors of the Texan economy, irrespective of their immigration status. My top priority is to protect and empower them.

Today, ill-advised state legislation threatens to jeopardize the entirety of Mexico’s cooperative relationship with Texas. The Mexican government cannot remain indifferent to initiatives that racially profile and unlawfully detain not just Mexican nationals, but anyone of Mexican descent. Our message is clear in the amicus curiae brief filed in federal court.

In the past days, I have met with Texans to reaffirm the values that unite us. If we steer our relationship by those values, with shared prosperity as our common destiny, there is nothing that, together, we cannot achieve.

Alicia Bárcena is Mexico’s foreign affairs secretary.

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