Joe Biden will be joined by first lady on his trip to Mexico City
CNN –
First Lady Jill Biden will join President Joe Biden on his trip next week to Mexico City, according to the White House.
Biden has a “substantial, independent schedule that will focus on our shared cultural ties and her work to empower women and girls around the world,” the first lady’s press secretary, Vanessa Valdivia, told CNN. on Saturday.
The announcement comes ahead of the president’s first visit as commander-in-chief to Mexico, where he will discuss migration issues with the country’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, as well as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, for the North American Leaders Summit in Mexico City. Along the way, Biden plans to visit the southern US border on Sunday, stopping in El Paso, Texas, to meet with local officials and address border security issues. It will be his first border stop as president.
El Paso began seeing record levels of immigrant arrivals starting a few weeks ago, when anxiety over the planned end of the Trump-era pandemic public health rule, known as Title 42, led thousands of migrants to turn themselves in to border authorities or cross into the United States illegally in a very short period of time.
Title 42 allows immigration authorities to quickly return some immigrants to Mexico. The policy was slated to be scrapped last month, but a Supreme Court ruling kept the rule in place while legal challenges play out in court.
On Thursday, Biden announced that he is expanding a program to accept up to 30,000 immigrants a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela — along with a plan to deport as many immigrants from those countries who flout U.S. laws. – while his administration faces the immigrant. growth on the southern border.
Jill Biden leaves for Mexico City on Sunday and will meet with the president when she arrives after his visit to the border.
Highlights of the first lady’s solo agenda include joining local students at a Tochito NFL flag football game. On Monday, Biden will join Mexican first lady Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller for a “Fandango por la Lectura” at the Palacio Nacional, an event to raise awareness of the importance of reading.
On Tuesday, the two women will meet again for a conjugal lunch, along with Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, wife of the Canadian prime minister. The three will later visit the Templo Mayor, the main temple of the indigenous people of Mexico in their capital city of Tenochtitlan in modern Mexico City.
Jill Biden will also attend several events with her husband, the White House said.
