MEXICO CITY -- Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Wednesday that he plans to visit his country's southern border to discuss with governors and mayors there how to stop the smuggling of child migrants -- an issue of growing concern for the United States.
The United States government has asked Mexico and the countries of Central America's Northern Triangle -- Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador -- to help lower the number of child migrants arriving at its own border with Mexico.
The Biden administration said this week that it had reached agreements with those countries to use troops to crack down on migrant smuggling. The move was criticized by human-rights defenders and migrant advocates, who said it would make it more difficult for people seeking international protection.
But Lopez Obrador said at his daily news conference Wednesday that the desire to protect those rights is motivating Mexico's efforts to stop child migrants.
"To protect children we are going to reinforce the surveillance, the protection, the care on our southern border because it's to defend human rights," he said.
He showed photographs of a tractor-trailer rig stopped in the southern city of Tuxtla Gutierrez on Tuesday that was carrying 149 migrants, including 28 children, from Honduras and Guatemala.
The president also said that the director of Mexico's child and families protection agency would move from Mexico City to the southern city of Tapachula until the situation improves.
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The number of children arriving at the U.S. southern border has become a growing problem for the Biden administration. It continues quickly returning most migrants to Mexico, but has said it will not do so with unaccompanied minors.
The government has struggled to house and care for the children in acceptable settings before reuniting them with relatives.
Central American families, encouraged by smugglers, are increasingly taking young children with them, hoping that it will improve their chances of being allowed to stay in the U.S. while their cases proceed. Some of the parents returned to Mexico have decided to send their children back across the border to the U.S. unaccompanied.
In late March, President Joe Biden said Vice President Kamala Harris would take charge of U.S. efforts in Mexico and the Northern Triangle to address the root causes of migration. She said Wednesday that she soon planned to visit Mexico and Guatemala.
Harris told reporters Wednesday that she was "looking forward to traveling, hopefully as my first trip, to the Northern Triangle," with stops in Mexico and Guatemala planned. She said she would go as soon as possible, depending on restrictions put in place for the pandemic.
But when asked if she would visit the border, Harris suggested she had no plans to do so, noting that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had been authorized by the president to deal with the increase in immigration there, while she was focused on dealing with the root causes of immigration to the U.S.
It's a decision that's certain to fuel criticism from Republicans that the Biden administration isn't doing enough to address the large increase in immigration at the border. Harris and Biden both have been hammered by GOP lawmakers for not visiting the border, even as jarring photos of children held in overcrowded detention centers drew fresh attention to the issue.
Biden has dispatched a number of top aides to evaluate the situation at the border instead.
Indeed, Republican lawmakers returning from a border trip blamed the Biden administration for the problems, arguing for a return to Trump-era policies. They said the president and vice president need to go to the border to see firsthand the migrant surge.
"He can stop this today," said Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the GOP whip. "Vice President Harris needs to go down to the border and see this for herself."
On Wednesday, Harris was leading a briefing with a handful of experts focused on issues in the Northern Triangle, and she acknowledged in remarks to reporters that solving the region's problems would take time.
"We have to figure out how to assess our impact," she said, but added, "it will not be obvious overnight."
"The work we have to do is going to require a commitment that is continuous, that we institutionalize with our partners," and that includes a long-term strategy in the region, Harris said.
She added: "It will take some time to see the benefits of that work, but it will be worth it."
Information for this article was contributed by Alexandra Jaffe and Lisa Mascaro of The Associated Press.