The United States and Mexico have reached agreement on a new plan to control the flow of illegal border crossings while also allowing migrants to enter the U.S. on humanitarian grounds.
The plan was announced Tuesday after a meeting between Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and U.S. Homeland Security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall in Mexico City.
Under the plan, the United States will accept migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela as part of a humanitarian parole program, while Mexico has agreed to accept migrants from those four nations who entered the United States illegally.
The U.S. will also accept about 100,000 people from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras under a family reunification program.
The agreement comes ahead of the end of COVID-19 restrictions imposed by the administration of former President Donald Trump known as Title 42. The restrictions allowed U.S. officials to quickly expel tens of thousands of migrants for illegally entering the country.
The Title 42 policy will officially end on May 11.
In a related move, the administration of President Joe Biden has agreed to send an additional 1,500 active-duty military personnel to the southern U.S. border as local and state officials brace for a surge of migrants from Central and South America.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
