The meeting had been announced on 28 February at the close of a meeting in Washington between the heads of diplomacy of the United States, Mexico and Guatemala, but until now its final date has been informed.
Guatemala will host a continental conference on May 7 to address the migration crisis, which will be attended by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and about twenty of his peers in America, diplomatic sources reported Tuesday.
The meeting had been announced on 28 February at the close of a meeting in Washington between the heads of diplomacy of the United States, Mexico and Guatemala, but until now its final date has been informed. Originally, it was planned to take place in April.
“They confirmed the date of May 7 [for the] Ministerial Meeting of the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection,” signed at the 2022 Summit of the Americas held in that U.S. city, a head of the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry told AFP.
“We have to thank Guatemala for hosting this Declaration conference on May 7 and Secretary Blinken is coming for this conference,” U.S. Ambassador Tobin Bradley told reporters.
The conclave will be attended by the foreign ministers of about twenty countries of the continent, according to the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry. Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo will also participate.
Migration has become one of the main themes of the campaign for the November elections in the United States, where Democratic President Joe Biden is seeking re-election against former President Donald Trump, besieged by Republicans who accuse him of not doing enough to solve the immigration crisis.
The U.S. border patrol has intercepted more than 2.7 million irregular migrants on the Mexican border since January 2023, of whom more than 800,000 were Mexicans and more than 285,000 Guatemalans, according to official data.
“The issue of migration is very important for the United States and the entire region. We need to think about our regional challenges with original solutions,” Bradley said.
This issue has been a central part of the bilateral relationship between the United States and Arévalo, who took power in January and visited Washington in March to discuss the issue with Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Also in March, the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, visited Guatemala, where he urged migrants to use legal avenues to enter their country and avoid deportations. The Los Angeles Declaration was signed by 20 countries.
This article has been translated from the original which first appeared in Diario El Mundo