Yahoo TV

STORY: Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Wednesday called for a regional meeting to discuss migration as a record number of people try the dangerous crossing through the Darien Gap.

He said a joint plan was needed, to not only protect migrants, but to combat the root causes that force so many - from Venezuela, Cuba and countries in Central America - to leave their homes.

“Almost all of them pass through Mexico and we must take care of migrants and protect them. But we must avoid an increase of the migrant flux because there are risks.”

Obrador said the meeting would take place in approximately ten days with the foreign ministers of ten Latin American countries.

On Tuesday, the Mexican government's migration authority said it had deployed over 260 buses and vans to disperse over 8,000 migrants from the southern city of Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala, to other parts of the country.

In recent weeks, large numbers of migrants have been crossing into the United States from Mexico, piling pressure on the Biden administration to stem the flow of people as the U.S. 2024 presidential election race begins to heat up.